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Estate planners often worry about minimizing or avoiding estate taxation at death, but gift taxation must be considered when making transfers during lifetime. Smaller gifts can avoid gift taxation due to the gift tax annual exclusion, which allows taxpayers to transfer relatively small amounts of property without any gift tax impact at all. However, if a gift is made to a trust, instead of outright, the gift tax result may differ. In most cases, gifts in trust are intended to qualify for the gift tax annual exclusion by giving the trust beneficiary a right of withdrawal over trust contributions - often referred to as a Crummey power, named after the court decision that first allowed this strategy.

Subscriber Drafting Webinars provide continued training on various aspects of using the InterActive Legal software, usually focusing on drafting particular documents or using certain drafting options. These webinars are free to ILS subscribers. They provide insight and training regarding specific documents and options available within the drafting systems. Subscribers will receive an email outlining the topic of each drafting webinar with instructions for registration.

Now that we have reached the holiday gift-giving season, it seems only fitting to talk about packages.  In this case, however, it's not a present or gift, but a package of estate planning documents.  Most planners are familiar with preparing a group of documents - often called a "package" - that includes one or more testamentary documents plus two or more ancillary documents for incapacity planning.  This subscriber drafting webinar will focus on how to work with a group of documents in the program, and also how to set up standard document packages to improve efficiency.

In this subscriber drafting webinar, we will review the types of trusts that can be created for a surviving spouse, including trusts that qualify for the marital deduction (and therefore the step-up in basis at the survivor’s death), discretionary “sprinkle” trusts for the spouse and family, credit-shelter trusts, supplemental needs trusts, and trusts for retirement assets. We will cover how to trigger each of these trusts in the various practice systems, as well as the options for designing each type of trust within Wills, Revocable Trusts, and Joint Revocable Trusts. We’ll also briefly review inter vivos trusts for spouses (sometimes called “SLATs”), and how to draft them in your InterActive Legal program.