Estate Planners are – perhaps surprisingly – starting off 2020 with a significant change in a major area of estate and financial planning. The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (“SECURE”) Act was enacted on December 20, 2019, and is effective on January 1st. It makes several changes to the minimum distribution rules for individual retirement accounts and other retirement assets, changes the age cap for contributing to retirement accounts, and severely limits the use of so-called “stretch-IRAs.” This last change is likely to have the most impact on estate planners, because it removes the ability to stretch out payments from retirement assets over a beneficiary’s lifetime – for all but a few types of beneficiaries – and requires payout within ten years.
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Natalie B. Choate practices law in Boston, Massachusetts, with the firm of Nutter McClennen & Fish LLP. Her practice is limited to consulting on estate planning and retirement benefits matters. Her books Life and Death Planning for Retirement Benefits and The QPRT Manual are leading resources for estate planning professionals.
Miss Choate is a former chairman of the Boston Bar Association Estate Planning Committee, which she founded in 1981, and its ERISA and Employee Benefits Law Committee, from 1990-1992. She is a former Regent of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and former Chairman of its Employee Benefits Committee. She is a member and former officer of the Boston Probate and Estate Planning Forum. She was named “Estate Planner of the Year” by the Boston Estate Planning Council, and was one of the first 10 attorneys to receive the “Distinguished Accredited Estate Planner” award from the National Association of Estate Planners and Councils. She is listed in The Best Lawyers in America.
She is an editorial advisor for several professional periodicals: Trusts and Estates, Ed Slott’s IRA Advisor, The Leimberg Information Service Employee Benefits Newsletter and Keeping Current. Her articles have been published in ACTEC Notes, Trusts and Estates and Estate Planning magazine. She is a contributing author and former coeditor of the book Drafting Wills and Trusts in Massachusetts. She authors a monthly column on retirement benefits for MorningstarAdvisor.com.
Miss Choate has taught professional-level courses in estate planning for ALI-ABA (the American Law Institute-American Bar Association), American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, International Association of Financial Planners, MCLE, the Boston and Massachusetts Bar Associations, and other organizations, and has spoken at the Heckerling, Notre Dame, Heart of America, New England, Southern California, Mississippi, Southern Federal, and many other Tax Institutes. She has lectured in 49 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Her comments on estate and retirement planning have been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Forbes, Financial Planning, USA Today, and Financial World magazines.
A Boston native, she is a graduate of Radcliffe College and Harvard Law School.
