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Estate Planning and Drafting

3rd Edition
Jeffrey N. Pennell
ISBN: 9781647086596
Subject: Estate Planning
Format: Print - Hardbound
Page Count: 817
Copyright: 2020 | Status: In Stock
Other Formats Available

Updated through August 1, 2020, the third edition of Pennell’s Estate Planning and Drafting focuses on every-day planning for “middle-rich” clients. For example:

  • Traditional planning for couples who may not have as much wealth as double the basic exclusion amount but who anticipate that the exclusion amount may decline in the future. They must consider whether to qualify 100% of the estate of the first to die for the marital deduction (and defer all taxes), or instead to shelter the unified credit of the first to die in a nonmarital trust. In either case they also need to decide whether to elect portability for any unused exclusion amount.
  • A sharper focus on family trust planning for clients with enough wealth to worry about protecting their beneficiaries (and wealth) but for whom sophisticated tax-minimization techniques are not needed.
  • A new brief explanation of Code Chapter 14 illustrates its application but notes that most middle-rich clients will not stumble into estate freezing techniques.
  • The coverage of retirement benefits is updated to reflect the SECURE Act changes to the required-minimum-distribution rules, and elimination of most stretch-payout planning.
  • The chapter on charitable giving is streamlined and simplified in recognition that most middle-rich clients do not make extensive use of private foundations or split-interest trusts.
  • Information about postmortem planning and fiduciary administration stresses state and federal income taxation and state death taxation in situations that do not trigger federal wealth transfer taxation.
  • The text explains essential tax fundamentals that inform traditional techniques (e.g. Crummey powers), without overemphasis on the tax-oriented practices that led to their original adoption.

There are over 100 pages of annotated forms illustrating basic planning documents, including a pour over will, self-trusteed declaration of trust, irrevocable life insurance trust, family and marital deduction trusts, and a third-party special needs trust.

View the full summary of major changes in 2020 here.


Imprint: West Academic Publishing
Series: American Casebook Series
Publication Date: 10/22/2020

Jeffrey N. Pennell, Emory University School of Law

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  • Edited to reduce the wealth-transfer-tax orientation of many discussions and focus more on planning that is appropriate for clients whose net worth is below the federal wealth transfer tax exclusion amount, for whom tax-centric planning is secondary.
  • Updated all examples to 2020 rates and exclusions.
  • Streamlined the chapter on charitable planning by removing much of the more highly technical elements that related to income-tax-qualification of various dispositive devices.
  • Added a brief introduction to Chapter 14 of the Internal Revenue Code to the summary chapter on the federal wealth transfer taxes, explaining provisions meant to preclude “estate freezing” and other valuation schemes.
  • Revised the chapter on retirement benefits to reflect changes made by the SECURE Act, particularly relating to the required minimum distribution rules and “stretch payout” planning, which largely has been eliminated.
  • Replaced one special needs trust annotated form with another that is better targeted to the same SECURE Act changes.

View the full summary of major changes in 2020 here.

Learn more about this series.