Turkey. Done. Pie. Done. Black Friday. Done. Next? December. But first, our review of elder law items of interest from November: Estate & Tax Planning The estate tax exemption will take a relatively big jump in 2023. It increases to $12.92 million per person from $12.06 million in 2022. That’s an extra $860,000 to plan with. Here’s how wealthy folks might take advantage of that jump – before the gift limit gets dialed back to a $5 million base in

One of the common and vexing problems in administering a decedent's estate is how to deal with a pretermitted spouse. To most non-lawyers, that sounds vaguely disturbing. What is a "pretermitted spouse," and why do we care about their problems? What - or who - is a "pretermitted spouse"? "Pretermitted" is just a near-archaic term meaning "omitted." The older version is rarely used, except by lawyers (and law students). Even in the law, the trend is away from the old-fashioned

Something surprising happened in 2021: Estate tax revenue increased. Though the estate tax exemption has never been higher, the amount collected almost doubled from 2020 to 2021, from $9.3 billion to $18.4 billion, recent IRS data indicates. Experts suspect it’s the combination of pandemic death rates and market gains in stocks and real estate. Some people simply got caught dying with too much money. Although the $18.4 billion they paid might sound like a lot, it’s barely a blip in

A client asked last week whether he had properly signed his own DNR and DNI orders. We asked if he meant a "do not resuscitate" and "do not intubate" order. He confirmed that was what he thought he had signed. It made us think we need to look at the advance directive issue and update some of our earlier posts on the subject. Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) Lots of clients want to execute a "Do Not Resuscitate" order for themselves.