Estate Planning

We meet with clients to ascertain their estate planning objectives and intentions. We draft a revocable living trust to accomplish the client’s dispositive intentions, to avoid or minimize taxes upon succession to the client’s estate, and to avoid probate proceedings. When the client has reviewed and approved the trust governing document (called a “declaration of trust”) we supervise the client’s execution of it.

A revocable living trust avoids only as to property which is titled to the trust (as opposed to the client) at the client’s death. Thus we convey the client’s property to the trust during the client’s lifetime. During the client’s lifetime, the trust property and the income therefrom is exclusively available for the client’s benefit, and the trust remains amendable and revocable by the client. At the client’s death, the remaining property of the trust passes to the persons to whom the client has bequeathed the property in the declaration of trust.

For a married couple, we favor a joint declaration of trust for both spouses. As long as either of the spouses is living, the trust property and the income therefrom is exclusively available for the benefit of the spouses or whichever of them is living and mentally capacitated, and the trust remains amendable and revocable by the spouses or whichever of them is living and mentally capacitated.

Our revocable living declaration of trust minimizes Federal estate tax by utilizing the estate tax marital deduction, and by utilizing each spouse’s unified credit exclusion amount. The unified credit exclusion amount is an opportunity every individual has to pass property to the next generation free of Federal estate tax. For decedents dying in 2024, the unified credit exclusion amount of an individual is $13,610,000. The unified credit amount of a married couple is twice that amount.
Property held in a qualified retirement plan or individual retirement account or an annuity cannot be transferred to a trust, as such a transfer would constitute a taxable distribution of such property. In planning an estate we do, however, confirm that beneficiary designations on the client’s retirement plans, individual retirement accounts, annuities, and life insurance policies are as the client wants them to be.

We counsel clients on avoiding or minimizing income tax on the sale of property by utilizing the step-up in adjusted basis of the property to fair market value of property on the date of the property owner’s or deemed owner’s death.

We prepare for each estate planning client a health care durable power of attorney, in which the client designates a succession of patient advocates to make medical decisions for the client in the evert the client is incapacitated and unable to make such decisions for himself or herself. We also prepare for each estate planning client a general durable power of attorney, in which the client designates a succession of attorneys-in-fact (agents) to make transactions in the client’s property, for the exclusive benefit of the client, in the event the client is unable to make such decisions for himself or herself.

We perform estate planning services for the benefit of our client and for no one else. We will not have a conflict of interest.