Elections have impacts. At the time of this writing, Donald Trump will become the 47th President of the United States on January 20, 2025, and Republicans are poised to take control of both houses of Congress.
Qualified Personal Residence Trusts
Mr. Wright expresses his opinions and writes regular articles specifically for his clients on estate law. With interest rates rising and the federal estate tax exemption about to be cut in half in 2026, qualified personal residence trusts are becoming increasingly attrac ...
Secure Act Redux: Surprises and New Flexibility for IRA Beneficiary Trusts
In early 2020, we alerted you about Congress’s enactment of the “Secure Act” in a two-part article series. For the most part, this new federal law ended “stretch” inherited individual retirement accounts allowing beneficiaries to withdraw IRA funds over the course of their ...
Using Spousal “Bert and Earnie” Trusts to Stretch Estate Tax Exemptions
Few spouses recognize that just as you can make annual trust gifts for other family members that are excluded from federal gift and estate tax, you can also make annual tax excluded gifts to your spouse. These spousal tax excluded gifts are often an overlooked opportunity b ...
InSecure Inheritance Trusts
In late December of 2019, Congress enacted new legislation designed to allow older Americans additional tax-deductible ways to grow their qualified retirement plans. Unfortunately, this Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act (the SECURE Act) ends the righ ...
Reviewing Estate Plans after the SECURE Act
After enactment of the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act (the SECURE Act) on January 1, 2020, clients now need to re-examine their estate planning with their advisors with regard to their IRAs and other qualified retirement plans. As we noted in ...
Charitable Remainder Trusts
With clients worried about a perceived stock market top in the near term and a potential recession in the next 18 months, it's probably a good time to look at an old favorite in our Estate and Trust planning toolbag: the Charitable Remainder Trust (generally referred to as ...
Nitty-Gritty Details About Charitable Remainder Trust Participants
We previously provided an overview of Charitable Remainder Trusts (CRTs) and suggested that they might be a good strategy to employ to avoid immediate capital gains taxes on appreciated or concentrated marketable securities positions. That overview has sparked a number of s ...
Additional Charitable Remainder Trust Considerations
We previously provided an overview of Charitable Remainder Trusts (“CRTs”) and suggested that now might be a good time to employ this strategy to avoid immediate capital gains taxes on appreciated or concentrated marketable securities positions. That overview has sparked a ...
A.R.T. and Estate Planning
Assisted Reproductive Technology and Estate Planning: When Science Gets Ahead of the Law Traditionally, Americans and the law have thought of families as mothers, fathers and their children conceived by conventional methods and brought to term in the mother’s womb. ...