Archive: Estates and Trusts

Most probate and trust clients winding up the financial affairs of a deceased family member focus first and foremost on marshaling assets. Selling real estate, making claims on life insurance, inheriting retirement accounts—these are the transactions that are often on top of mind for our clients. As we near tax time, there is one other...

“Who should we give copies of our estate planning documents?” Almost invariably, we are asked this question by our estate planning clients at some point during our work with them.  The answer is “it depends”.  It depends on the documents you have signed.  It depends on where you are in life.  And it may even depend...

Our estate attorneys frequently receive calls from clients who want to organize their parent’s estate. As they acknowledge their parent’s aging, they want to understand how they can strategize in advance to ease its administration in the future. Unfortunately, our estate attorneys also frequently encounter clients who are confronting the death of a parent. These clients...

Regular readers of our e-newsletter know that, following a tempestuous fall, the federal estate tax seems to be settled for the time being. The IRS recently announced updates to the annual “exclusions” for estate tax and gifting for 2022. The estate tax exclusion is the amount that can pass tax-free to a non-spouse upon your...

For readers of the monthly Bulman Dunie e-newsletter over the last several months, you may have experienced whiplash. In the spring, we offered our first prediction as to possible changes to estate tax laws.  We predicted no change to the federal estate tax exemption, but perhaps a change to cost basis rules. Last month, we...

Major changes to the federal estate tax exemption are likely looming, perhaps as soon as January 1, 2022. The “estate tax exemption” refers to the amount of wealth you can pass upon your death tax-free.  Assets above the exemption amount are subject to estate tax.  The federal estate tax is one of the highest tax...

We have previously written about health care powers of attorney and financial powers of attorney. For a health care power of attorney (an advance directive), a health care surrogate’s authority does not vest until medical providers are satisfied that the principal (the person nominating the surrogate) can no longer meaningfully communicate or make decisions. Unlike a...