Can You Trust Your Kid With $5.25 Million?
Wealthy families got a holiday gift on Jan. 1 when Congress agreed on permanent estate-tax rules that are much more generous than many financial planners had expected.
Some aren't celebrating, however. Instead, they are grappling with new questions about how best to set up trusts for their heirs—while keeping a measure of control over their wealth.
Families can build in ways to revise their estate-planning vehicles down the road. Decanting can be used to move a trust to a different state with more advantageous trust accounting or administration rules or tax rates. "I think a lot of drafters built in so-called decanting provisions because there was a lot of work being done in a hurry at year-end," says Trusts, Estates and Fiduciary Dispute Resolution Partner Shari Levitan.