The 2025 Heckerling Institute was held in-person (and virtually) in Orlando on January 13-17 and marked the conference’s 59th year. The Phillip E. Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning is the nation’s premier conference for estate planning professionals, offering unparalleled educational and professional development opportunities for all members of the estate planning team. Over the course of the conference’s five days, numerous timely topics of interest to estate planners of all designations—including, but not limited to, attorneys, trust officers, accountants, charitable giving professionals, elder law specialists, wealth management professionals, and nonprofit advisors. As they have done for many years, the American…
Heckerling 2024 Reports from the ABA
The 2024 Heckerling Institute was held in-person (and virtually) in Orlando on January 8-12 and marked the conference’s 58th year. The Phillip E. Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning is the nation’s premier conference for estate planning professionals, offering unparalleled educational and professional development opportunities for all members of the estate planning team. Over the course of the conference’s five days, numerous timely topics of interest to estate planners of all designations—including, but not limited to, attorneys, trust officers, accountants, charitable giving professionals, elder law specialists, wealth management professionals, and nonprofit advisors. As they have done for many years, the American…
New Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) Provisions in SECURE Act 2.0 – Some Welcome, Some Dubious
By Edwin P. Morrow, III, J.D., LL.M., MBA, CFP®, CM&AA® and Nancy H. Welber, J.D., ACTEC Thanks to the generosity of Leimberg Information Services, we are pleased to provide you this recently published article on LISI. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Section 307 of the SECURE 2.0 Act, effective beginning in 2023, provides an expansion of the qualified charitable distribution (QCD) provisions to adjust for inflation and include limited distributions to fund charitable gift annuities and charitable remainder trusts. There are several limitations that severely restrict the usefulness of this new provision, however, particularly for QCDs to charitable remainder trusts. FACTS Congress recently…
SECURE 2.0 Act Enhances Special Needs—See Through Trust Planning
By Edwin P. Morrow, III, J.D., LL.M., MBA, CFP®, CM&AA® and Nancy H. Welber, J.D., ACTEC Thanks to the generosity of Leimberg Information Services, we are pleased to provide you this recently published article on LISI. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Section 337 of the Secure 2.0 Act, effective in 2023, provides a welcome, though very limited in scope, enhancement to special needs trusts designed to receive retirement benefits and qualify as see through trusts under the Secure Act provision for applicable multi-beneficiary trusts (AMBTs). The new provision provides that most charities can now be remainder beneficiaries after the death of a disabled…
SECURE Act 2.0 Offers Longer Stretch for Conduit Trusts, But Contains Traps for Surviving Spouses
By Edwin P. Morrow, III, J.D., LL.M., MBA, CFP®, CM&AA® Thanks to the generosity of Leimberg Information Services, we are pleased to provide you this recently published article on LISI. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Section 327 of the SECURE Act 2.0, effective in 2024, will provide over $1.1 billion in new tax benefits for those in the know, but traps for the unwary. The downside is that the changes may actually be quite harmful in certain situations for surviving spouses inheriting retirement plans, causing an earlier required beginning date and higher required minimum distributions (“RMDs”) than under current law, if the new…
Heckerling 2023 Reports from the ABA
The Phillip E. Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning is the nation’s premier conference for estate planning professionals, offering unparalleled educational and professional development opportunities for all members of the estate planning team. The 2023 Heckerling Institute was held in-person in Orlando on January 9-13 and marked the conference’s 57th year. Over the course of the conference’s five days, numerous timely topics of interest to estate planners of all designations—including, but not limited to, attorneys, trust officers, accountants, charitable giving professionals, elder law specialists, wealth management professionals, and nonprofit advisors. As they have done for many years, the American Bar Association…
The SECURE Act: Everything You Need to Know (and How to Advise Your Clients!)
On December 20, 2019, President Trump signed a spending bill which had attached to it a piece of legislation that much of the estate, tax and financial world has been anxiously awaiting for an update on called the “Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019” (or “SECURE Act”). The SECURE Act went into effect January 1st, 2020 and is set to dramatically impact retirement planning for you and your clients! As many are aware, the most important provision of the SECURE Act to impact our clients and the planning we do for them includes the elimination of…
The 2010-2019 All-Decade Estate Planning Awards
By Steven J. Oshins, Esq., AEP (Distinguished) This past decade has arguably seen more changes in the estate planning industry than ever before. This article will highlight many of these changes by handing out awards in a number of different categories. #1. MOST SUBSTANTIAL CHANGE IN THE LAW AWARD WINNER: SUBSTANTIAL INCREASE IN ESTATE TAX EXEMPTION. The change in the law that has been the most significant was the substantial increase in the federal estate tax exemption. No other change in the law played such a prominent role in the way estate planners plan since this essentially turned estate tax planners…
Are You (or Have You) Drafted IRA Trusts? You Better Make Sure You Do THIS!
By Kristina Schneider, Practice-Building & Marketing Specialist As you may be aware, the SECURE Act threated to reduce the IRA beneficiary stretchout from life expectancy to only 10 years. However, after passing through the House in late May, it has yet to make its way through the Senate. It’s still unclear if and when it may get passed and now into December, it doesn’t seem likely to pass sometime this year. If you have been and/or are drafting standalone IRA Beneficiary Trusts (or IRA Inheritance Trusts®) for your clients, you may nevertheless have these or other law changes in the…
2019 ABA Heckerling Reports from 53rd Annual Heckerling Institute
For the past 22 years, the American Bar Association Section of Real Property, Trust and Estate Law with the permission of the University of Miami School of Law, releases several extensive reports highlighting the various lectures and proceedings of the Heckerling Institute, one of the nation’s largest estate planning conferences, held every year in January. This week in Orlando, Florida, the 53rd Annual Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning took place. To view, download and access these extensive reports (which are still being updated and added), see below. Further, at the above website, you can also access reports from prior Heckerling…