Choosing the Estate Tax or Opting Out

Michael T. Cody and Denise J. Ouellet (Attorneys at Law, Quincy, MA) recently published their article entitled Choosing the Estate Tax or Opting Out – Considerations for the 2010 Surviving Spouse, 5 The WealthCounsel Quarterly (April 2011). An excerpt from the beginning of the article is below:

For estate and tax planners, 2010 was a year of limbo in which more questions were raised than resolved. In the end, practitioners were left with two estate tax regimes to choose from in settling the estates of 2010 decedents – either apply the $5,000,000 estate tax ex¬emption with a 35% estate tax rate on anything over that amount (default), or, opt out of the estate tax entirely. For the surviving spouses, a unique analysis involving several factors outlined below is required to determine the more favorable outcome.