Estate Planning Tax Law Update Webinar

To provide CPAs, tax accountants, estate planners, and finance professionals with actionable insights, advanced structuring tools, and practical guidance needed to minimize unified transfer tax liabilities and optimize multi-generational wealth preservation strategies.

• Federal gift and estate tax (unified transfer tax system)
  – Overview of the unified system
  – Current exemption amount
  – Annual gift tax exclusion
• Current strategies estate planners are using
  – Direct outright gifts
• Irrevocable life insurance trusts
  – Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLATs)
  – Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs)
  – Dynasty trusts and GST-exempt structures
  – Family limited partnerships and minority-interest discounts
  – Charitable lead trusts and split-interest planning
  – The state-level estate tax overlay
  – What clients are actually getting wrong

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, tax accountants, estate planners, and finance professionals with actionable insights, advanced structuring tools, and practical guidance needed to minimize unified transfer tax liabilities and optimize multi-generational wealth preservation strategies.

DETAILED LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Explain how the unified federal transfer tax exemption applies to lifetime gifts, transfers at death, and generation-skipping transfers

• Identify the approximate federal gift and estate tax exemption available to a married couple in 2026 when portability is properly elected

• Explain how married couples can use gift splitting to increase the annual exclusion available for gifts to one recipient

• Describe how the federal anti-clawback regulations protect gifts made while a higher exemption is in effect

• Identify the reciprocal trust doctrine as a potential concern when spouses establish SLATs for each other

• Explain how a GRAT transfers appreciation exceeding the Section 7520 rate to remainder beneficiaries

• Evaluate how valuation discounts may increase the effectiveness of transfers involving limited interests in an FLP or LLC

• Recognize how state estate-tax exemptions may differ from the federal estate-tax exemption

• Federal gift and estate tax (unified transfer tax system)
  – Overview of the unified system
  – Current exemption amount
  – Annual gift tax exclusion
• Current strategies estate planners are using
  – Direct outright gifts
• Irrevocable life insurance trusts
  – Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLATs)
  – Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs)
  – Dynasty trusts and GST-exempt structures
  – Family limited partnerships and minority-interest discounts
  – Charitable lead trusts and split-interest planning
  – The state-level estate tax overlay
  – What clients are actually getting wrong

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.