While a spousal lifetime access trust may make sense for many wealthy married couples, they do present some risks in how they are administered, how they are drafted, and the ever-present danger of a future divorce.

Many new IRA contribution and distribution rules will come into effect starting in January, 2024. Some are straightforward, while one in particular needs more guidance from the IRS to be fully understood.

While most of us are aware of the three-year statute of limitations when it comes to reporting gifts to the IRS, we tend to gloss over the requirement that the three-year statute of limitations only commences when there has been an adequate disclosure of the gift to the IRS.

With the release of the ‘chained’ Consumer Price Index for August 2023 behind us, we now have a pretty good idea of what the federal tax exemptions and exclusions will be for 2024.

While a divorce automatically revokes a disposition to an ex-spouse in a governing instrument like a Will or Trust, all by a Michigan statute, there continues to be a debate if a bequest or devise to a stepchild is also automatically revoked when a divorce occurs.

Much confusion in the retirement planning world stems from the fact that there are different rules for each type of retirement plan, e.g., IRA, Roth IRA, 403(b) plan, qualified plan, etc.

The administration a trust, either a charitable remainder trust or a grantor retained annuity trust, after it is created is equally as important as complying with the required technical terms of the trust, when the goal is to either obtain an income tax deduction or avoid the imposition of a taxable gift.

Providing information with regard to a trust to its beneficiaries is statutorily required. Ambiguity exists, however, when trying to determine what trust provisions affect the beneficiary’s interest or when a request for information from a trust beneficiary is unreasonable.

In recent IRS Notice 2023-62, the IRS delayed the SECURE Act 2.0 requirement that some catch-up 401(k) contributions be Roth catch-up contributions, i.e. made with after-tax dollars, until 2026.

Many ‘old’ irrevocable trust may soon be terminating or entering into new phases, where the generation skipping transfer tax (GSTT) will increasingly apply, with non-skip beneficiaries dying and with skip persons becoming eligible to receive trust distributions.