Advanced Trust Strategies for Estate Planning Webinar

To provide CPAs, estate planners, tax accountants and finance professionals with the technical expertise, tax frameworks, and strategic insights needed to structure advanced trusts, minimize transfer taxes, and lead multi-generational family governance planning.

• General principles and goals
• Common advanced techniques
  – Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs)
     • GRAT risks
     • GRAT uses
  – Intentionally Defective Grantor Trusts (IDGTs)
     • Selling assets to an IDGT
     • What makes a grantor trust intentionally defective
     • How are IDGTs taxed?
     • What happens to an IDGT when the grantor dies
  – Qualified Personal Residence Trusts (QPRTs)
     • How a QPRT works
  – Dynasty Trusts
  – General gifting strategies
• Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLATs)
  – Benefits and mechanics of SLATs
  – Risks and considerations
• Life insurance in estate planning
• Second-to-die (survivorship) life insurance
• Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts (ILITs)
  – Three-year lookback rule (IRC Section 2035)
  – Key planning considerations
• Beneficiary planning: Outright vs. in trust
  – Outright distributions to beneficiaries
     • Risks of outright distribution
  – Distributions in trust
     • Staggered and incentive distribution structures
     • Generation-skipping considerations
     • Practical considerations
• Educate the next generation about wealth
  – Family meetings and financial literacy programs
  – Gradual disclosure of family wealth
• Family governance structures
  – Conflict resolution mechanisms built into governance documents
• Role of professional financial planners, wealth managers, and family offices

Kristin Bagull, Counsel, KTS Law

Kristin G. Bagull focuses her practice on assisting both individuals and corporate fiduciaries with complex trusts, estates, and taxation issues. She works closely with her clients to develop tailored and effective asset protection strategies and business succession plans. Kristin has drafted numerous sophisticated estate plans on behalf of clients which includes lifetime qualified terminable interest property (QTIP) trusts, generation-skipping trusts, intentionally defective grantor trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, private foundations, and prenuptial agreements.

Kristin has extensive experience preparing complex trust accountings, estate tax returns, gift tax returns, and income tax returns. She also works with clients in handling and resolving tax controversies at both the state and federal levels. In addition to her estate planning and administration work, Kristin regularly represents clients in trust-related litigation, estate contests, and guardianship litigation matters.

Kristin was recognized in 2025 as a “Leading Lawyer” for Tax Law: Individual Trust, Will and Estate Planning Law by Leading Lawyers magazine.

To provide CPAs, estate planners, tax accountants and finance professionals with the technical expertise, tax frameworks, and strategic insights needed to structure advanced trusts, minimize transfer taxes, and lead multi-generational family governance planning.

DETAILED LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Identify the portion of a GRAT’s investment return that may pass to beneficiaries with little or no additional gift tax cost

• Explain why a sale of appreciated assets to an IDGT generally does not produce an immediately recognized capital gain

• Describe the estate tax result when a QPRT grantor dies before the retained term expires

• Identify ways to differentiate spousal trusts and reduce exposure to the reciprocal trust doctrine

• Explain how Crummey withdrawal powers can qualify ILIT contributions for the annual gift tax exclusion

• Apply the three-year inclusion rule to an existing life insurance policy transferred to an ILIT

• Evaluate the creditor-protection benefits of retaining inherited assets in trust

• Describe a gradual, maturity-based approach to communicating family wealth, values, and responsibilities to future generations

• Explain how second-to-die life insurance can provide estate liquidity following the death of the second spouse

• Describe how a dynasty trust and the generation-skipping transfer tax exemption can preserve wealth across multiple generations

• General principles and goals
• Common advanced techniques
  – Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs)
     • GRAT risks
     • GRAT uses
  – Intentionally Defective Grantor Trusts (IDGTs)
     • Selling assets to an IDGT
     • What makes a grantor trust intentionally defective
     • How are IDGTs taxed?
     • What happens to an IDGT when the grantor dies
  – Qualified Personal Residence Trusts (QPRTs)
     • How a QPRT works
  – Dynasty Trusts
  – General gifting strategies
• Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLATs)
  – Benefits and mechanics of SLATs
  – Risks and considerations
• Life insurance in estate planning
• Second-to-die (survivorship) life insurance
• Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts (ILITs)
  – Three-year lookback rule (IRC Section 2035)
  – Key planning considerations
• Beneficiary planning: Outright vs. in trust
  – Outright distributions to beneficiaries
     • Risks of outright distribution
  – Distributions in trust
     • Staggered and incentive distribution structures
     • Generation-skipping considerations
     • Practical considerations
• Educate the next generation about wealth
  – Family meetings and financial literacy programs
  – Gradual disclosure of family wealth
• Family governance structures
  – Conflict resolution mechanisms built into governance documents
• Role of professional financial planners, wealth managers, and family offices

Kristin Bagull, Counsel, KTS Law

Kristin G. Bagull focuses her practice on assisting both individuals and corporate fiduciaries with complex trusts, estates, and taxation issues. She works closely with her clients to develop tailored and effective asset protection strategies and business succession plans. Kristin has drafted numerous sophisticated estate plans on behalf of clients which includes lifetime qualified terminable interest property (QTIP) trusts, generation-skipping trusts, intentionally defective grantor trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, private foundations, and prenuptial agreements.

Kristin has extensive experience preparing complex trust accountings, estate tax returns, gift tax returns, and income tax returns. She also works with clients in handling and resolving tax controversies at both the state and federal levels. In addition to her estate planning and administration work, Kristin regularly represents clients in trust-related litigation, estate contests, and guardianship litigation matters.

Kristin was recognized in 2025 as a “Leading Lawyer” for Tax Law: Individual Trust, Will and Estate Planning Law by Leading Lawyers magazine.