In tax attorney Ray Madoff’s interview with Ezra Klein, she mentioned that 18 wealthy families got together to fund the lobbying campaign that killed the estate tax in the 1990’s. Google AI provided the names. Know your enemy.
Estate tax is far from dead. And is hefty rising to 40% very quickly. Some would like to kill it but the current administration merely raised the exemption to $15MM singles or $30MM married and made the provisions due to expire permanent.
You can make the estate tax whatever you want, just makes more business for estate tax planning lawyers via trusts, etc. Which reminds me, we need to update our stuff, regardless the limits.
My mother’s estate paid a 55% federal estate tax in 2001. So I’m astonished to hear that it was “killed” in the 1990s!
As for today, beware of state estate taxes. WA State has a substantial estate tax which is imposed at a much lower estate value than the federal tax. Married couples should look into establishing a credit shelter trust to shield assets from estate taxes. I rewrote my revocable living trust to instruct the trustee (who is myself at the moment) to minimize taxes from any agency (it was originally written “federal estate taxes”). Also to establish a credit shelter trust at my death.
Although a credit shelter trust doesn’t change the assets that can be used by the surviving spouse it significantly increases the tax-free estate that can pass to heirs after the death of the second spouse. These heirs can be relatives or charities.
Wendy @OrmontUS a credit shelter trust could be especially important in N.Y. State because the exemption isn’t portable to the surviving spouse and if the taxable estate exceeds 105% of the $7.35M exemption threshold, the entire estate is taxed, essentially erasing the benefit of the exemption.
“Before that happens” means “before I die” in this case. That puts you (and the rest of us) in the position of moving when you’re still happy where you are or waiting until you’re weaker and possibly desperately ill which would make moving quite difficult.
Not to mention that WA and OR have Death With Dignity laws while Texas doesn’t…which might leave you in a situation where you want to step out gracefully on your own terms (which you have said you intend to) but gave up that chance for the ability to save estate tax when you may not have any heirs you care about.
Not if you are old and fragile and happily ready to say “Thank you all, and I am done.” Mom was a skinny mountain climbing marathoner into her early 80’s, and at 97 she was very skinny. Dad’s mother was 96, and kept walking about two miles a day with her walker… Great-Aunt Vicki seemed to Will Herself to Die with the same ferocity that she used to wipe out racism in her neighborhood by daily kneeling and praying in front of the two homes and one business that did not come up to standards of civil life.
My guess is that me at 74 and still showing remnants of my surfing skiing musculature would take about three weeks, especially if I kept dancing (I get included in the friendliest way!)https://youtube.com/shorts/CBr-UcXXEt0?si=qBp0Qzp_lsy9dFtI
You would think so, but it very often can’t happen that way in real life. For example, guy is 91, suffers a stroke, can’t move right side and car barely move left side, and certainly has almost no mobility. Firearms are useless.
Same as above. Someone is going to need to get that tank of helium for you, someone will need to set it up. So there’s no big medicine intervention, but someone will have to intervene to make it happen. And they won’t do it because in most places without death with dignity laws it is considered to be “murder”
Sounds easy, but it ain’t.
Even this very often doesn’t work. Especially if you have people trying to keep you alive. They pop in a feeding tube and boom you suffer for another 5 months kind of “alive” but not really (relatives did this to my grandfather).
That’s why you have a living will. We are updating our trust and DPOAs. The healthcare DPOA specifically excludes anyone from altering our living will/natural death declaration.
I’ve heard of quite a few cases (and seen one up close) WITH living wills (or DNRs, etc) that were utterly ignored once the elderly person was incapacitated. When the elderly person has a sudden medical incident that rushes them to the hospital with loved ones surrounding them, the loved ones decide whether or not to provide the documents (DNR, living will, etc) to the hospital.
Dad was a small town lawyer with an extensive estate planning practice and observed that many people struggle to carry out the terms of dnr’s and living wills because of the emotional impact of not doing everything you can to keep your parents alive.
So he and Mom met with me and verbally explained his and Mom’s wishes not to be artificially kept alive. He also filed his dnr and living will with his family doctor. When Mom reached that point where it was time to let her go, it was still hard to actually do it. So when her family doctor called and explained it all to me, I took a walk, cried and let my feelings wash through me, and then called back and verbally told them to do what needed to be done.
If you have family you need to make it easier for them by designating your decision maker, verbally telling them your wishes, and filing your documents with your family doctor if you have one.
