DEAL FOR A WEEK; New Forms & Books

The challenges of 2023 are an opportunity to address planning from a fresh perspective.  There is a window of opportunity that may remain indefinitely – or may be closed in a few years– never to return in the client’s lifetime. The phrase “use it or lose it” may be appropriate.

The 2023 Estate and Tax Client Planning Letter encourages clients to take a fresh look at their planning situation to be sure that their decisions and documents express and memorialize those decisions, are up to date and take maximum advantage of the estate planning, income tax and business planning opportunities offered by the tax law.  

SAVE when you purchase three Life Insurance Trust Forms including:

1) Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust With Crummey Powers And Sample Crummey Letter (40 Pages)
2) Irrevocable Survivorship Life Insurance Trust With Crummey Powers And Sample Crummey Letter (33 Pages)
3) Split Dollar Life Insurance Agreement (With Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust As Policy Owner) And Collateral Assignment Of The Policy To The Employer By The Trustee (11 Pages).

Click "Learn More" above for more information about our 5 Irrevocable Trusts.  Alternatively, each Irrevocable Trust may be purchased individually.

With recent health and political concerns, more practitioners will be asked for help administering estates than in many years.

The window to take advantage of generous GST planning opportunities and to repair GST planning mistakes might be closing.  Political risk suggests at least the possibility that the current generous GST exclusion may be reduced substantially. This is a critical time to discuss GST planning with clients.

This is an Irrevocable Generation-Skipping (GST) Trust for child (for life), then for grandchildren i.e. more of a 2-generation trust than a Dynasty Trust. The limited power of appointment must be exercised for descendants and the default is to descendants if the power is not exercised. Thus, clearly there are GST implications.

Portability allows the estate of a decedent who is survived by a spouse to make an election to transfer the decedent's unused federal transfer tax exclusion. In this December 2022, 80-mimute program, Mr. Siegel gives a useful and comprehensive explanation of portability. Please see "Details" below for the many topics he covers.

Mr. Siegel clearly explains twenty-eight key changes that are included within SECURE Act 2.0 in this eleven page detailed written description.

Included in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, signed on December 29, 2022, is the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act 2.0. The Act is very wide-ranging in its coverage. It expands coverage of more workers, provides opportunities for increasing retirement savings at low and high income levels, further defers the age at which required minimum distributions must occur, offers relief from excise taxes when various hardships occur, reduces penalties for insufficient plan withdrawals, allows greater protected savings for disabled persons, and much more.