In this webinar we discuss 2022 estate planning and year end considerations, including:

• Pros and cons of annual gifts and nuances such as GST implications
• Whether practitioners should encourage clients to take steps in anticipation of 2026 reduction in the exemption amount
• If action can be taken that may reduce the risks of step transaction or reciprocal trust challenges against SLAT and other planning.
• Ideas in light of the Proposed Clawback Regulations
• Monitoring trust income in light of trust compressed tax rates, and considering the 65-day rule
• How to shore up valuation adjustment clauses in year end transactions
• Valuation issues practitioners should be concerned about (the GRAT CCA and Batty case).
• Recession as a possible remedy for unintended 2022 transactions
• Charitable gift planning before year end has always been a common practice but recent cases emphasize the need for practitioners to caution clients to carefully comply with substantiation and other requirements.

If you have heard of Private Placement Life Insurance, and want to learn more about how it can benefit your clients, this is the presentation for you. This webinar discusses:

• How Private Placement Life Insurance works, and how it’s different from a traditional insurance policy
• Who can benefit with client examples
• Key tax consideration
• The do’s and don’ts of PPLI structure and requirements
• Discussion of the best PPLI jurisdictions
• Emerging trends and planning opportunities

This webinar discusses important planning issues and options that are often overlooked in a “typical” Spousal Lifetime Access Trust plan, including:

• Enhancing access to SLAT assets by using SPAT and DAPT variations
• Coordinating with financial and insurance consultants to enhance the security of the plan for the clients (and lessen risks to practitioners)
• Actionable steps for how to do drafting and planning enhancements

This webinar discusses estate planning for clients who have blended or stepfamilies. Estate planning for clients who have blended or stepfamilies often presents significant and perplexing challenges for estate planners in the substantive planning. As if that was not difficult enough, estate planners may also encounter important ethical issues.

This webinar covers the often-counterintuitive ethical traps and landmines that estate planners face when working with blended or stepfamily clients, including:

• How practitioners can work effectively with blended families
• Joint and separate representation
• Precautions practitioners can take during the initial client meeting
• How to properly prepare for the initial meeting
• How to update questionnaires and other forms to reflect blended family data
• Sources of common conflicts of interest
• What the distinction is between consentable and non-consentable conflicts
• Specific practical estate planning situations that can present ethical challenges, including marriage contracts, joint tenancy, gift-splitting, powers of attorney, SLATs, gift tax returns, etc.

This webinar sets the stage with a review of split-dollar life insurance planning. We follow prior cases that held against other taxpayers using similar techniques. Understanding what the taxpayer did right in the Levine case, and how that contrasts to what taxpayers did wrong in a prior case, Estate of Cahill, can be used to guide taxpayers contemplating such planning. But even better guidance is possible. A careful reading of the Levine case to identify steps the Levine Court found favorable, might be used to craft a roadmap of how to implement a similar plan.

Importantly, the lessons in the roadmap that are discussed should be considered by taxpayers undertaking almost any type of estate planning. While aspects of the Levine opinion are pretty narrowly limited to the split dollar insurance technique used in the case, many have broad applicability. The IRS arguments and Tax Court’s response regarding code sections 2036, 2038 and 2703 will be reviewed.