Estate Planning and Cryptocurrency
November 16, 2022
by Jennifer R. Pierce
Digital assets, such as cryptocurrency, are becoming a larger component of investors’ portfolios. More and more people are owning some form of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency creates unique challenges for estate planning because (i) there is no personally identifiable information associated with…
Estate Planning Techniques in a Higher Interest Rate Environment
October 5, 2022
by B. Wade Bowen
One can hardly miss the high levels of inflation currently affecting our economy. Even for those who do not pay close attention to the news, where inflation could hardly be more covered, the price of nearly everything for consumers has skyrocketed as we have emerged from the COVID pandemic. To try…
Certain Trust Expenses Still Deductible Until 2026
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), while lowering taxes for most, raised them for a few. One group of those few taxpayers for whom taxes went up under TCJA were certain trusts and estates (generally those with large investment advisory fees or certain other expenses). The issue for these trusts is…
Portability, Rev. Proc 2017-34 and Potential Estate Tax Legislation
Recently widowed individuals whose deceased spouse’s estate did not make a portability election by the due date for filing an estate tax return -- because the estate either was not aware a portability election was available or required, or determined that a portability election was not necessary…
Yours, Mine and Ours: Estate Planning for a Blended Family
February 8, 2021
by Casey Dorman Lawson
When William Shakespeare wrote “What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine,” he likely was not thinking about a blended family. Blending families offer a myriad of challenges, one of which is how the spouses’ assets will be distributed at death. If you are a spouse in a blended family, the…