Tune Up Your Estate Now

摘要

A 55-year-old nashville dentist came to attorney Bryan Howard recently for an estate plan checkup. The den-tist's will provided that his two children from his first marriage would inherit the amount exempted from estate taxes, with the balance of his $2 million estate going into a trust for his second wife. When she died, what was left in the trust would go to the kids. Howard immediately saw a problem: What if Congress raised the exemption from estate and gift taxes from its current $675,000 to $2 million and the man got hit by a bus the next day? The children would get the entire estate and the wife nothing. He revised the document to provide that the kids would get the exemption amount-but only up to 50% of the value of the estate.