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Estate Planning Estate planning provides you with orderly succession plans designed to preserve the assets that you have worked so hard to accumulate. Wills, durable powers of attorney and trusts, where appropriate, function to allow your estate to be distributed in the method that you desire while maintaining the minimum liability to transfer and inheritance taxes. We often see clients who have complicated wills and trust documents, but the titling of their assets and beneficiary designations are improper such that their estate would not flow as desired. Therefore, if major changes are needed, we will discuss this with your attorney, and if necessary meet with you and your attorney to review these strategies. The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 has left estate planning unsettled for the remainder of this decade. Absent congressional action to the contrary, the provisions of this legislation are presently set to sunset in 2011 in which case, estate tax law will revert to that which was in effect in 2001. Meanwhile, many states have chosen to “decouple” from the scheduled increases in the federal estate tax exclusion causing a difficult situation to become worse. More than one attempt to eliminate federal estate tax has failed to make it through congress. All estate plans should be reviewed in light of the changes in the law in the last several years. |