Estate Planning with Portability and Higher Exemption Amounts

In this presentation, Rachel Rhein Zarghami, a trusts and estates attorney in Cummings & Lockwood’s Stamford, Connecticut office, discusses why traditional estate plans are still relevant in the era of portability and increasing exemption amounts.  She also discusses how to build flexibility into traditional structures to maximize federal and state estate tax exemptions and generation-skipping transfer tax vehicles.  (13:36)

Presentation Outline

1.  2017 Estate Tax Exemptions

      a.  Federal

      b.  State

 2.  2018 Estate Tax Exemptions

      a.  Federal

      b.  State

 3.  Does Your State Have An Estate of Inheritance Tax?

 4.  Exemptions on the rise

 5.  What is portability?

 6.  United States Estate (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return

 7.  Complications of relying on portability

 8.  Non-Tax (but critically important!) reasons to do estate planning

      a.  Incapacity planning

      b.  Division of property

      c.  Ability to choose fiduciaries

      d.  Protect inherited property from creditors

      e.  Incentivize children

      f.  Clients move; laws change