Missives

We often take the annual exclusion gift opportunity for granted, until we remember that only present gifts qualify.

ABLE accounts provide a unique estate and special needs planning device for disabled individuals and their families. These 2026 changes will be helpful when either drafting trusts or gift- planning for disabled individuals.

If it is a family business that is to be created and ultimately expected to be run by succeeding family generations, it may not make much sense to set up the business as a C corporation to begin with (using an LLC or S corporation passthrough entity to save taxes.)

What is important is to make sure that the trust provisions satisfy the see-through trust rules, and that the deemed election announced in the SECURE Act Final Regulations is consistent with the IRA owner’s testamentary wishes.

Congress is considering a bipartisan bill that would permit a qualified charitable distribution (QCD) to be made to a donor advised fund (DAF.)

For a philanthropic high-net-worth donor who wants to secure a substantial end-of-year charitable income tax deduction, while possibly shifting wealth to family members over time at a low, or no, transfer tax cost, a CLAT might be a useful strategy to consider.

Whenever the discussion of gifting hard-to-value assets comes up without causing a taxable gift, consider the utility of a defined value gift formula. Just be careful how that formula is phrased.

A restraint on alienation usually appears when a residence, farm, cottage, or vacation home is transferred on death to family members, often in the form of an imposed tenant-in-common agreement, options to purchase,  or rights of first refusal. If the imposed restraints are too ‘tight’ there is a good chance a court will not enforce those limitations.

This case is a helpful reminder that a challenge to an IRS certification under IRC 7345 cannot be brought as a general equitable claim within the IRS’s separate tax collection claim. Rather, the individual must file a separate, ‘stand-alone,’ civil action that expressly claims the erroneous nature of the certification itself.

If the trust instrument departs either from the MTC or the MUIPA, all bets are off, and probate courts will have to deal with the fiduciary’s payment and allocation of attorney fees pending litigation where the fiduciary’s actions may have been the cause of that litigation.