Category: Estate Administration
“NEW” RULES IMPLEMENTED ON INHERITED INDIVIDUAL RETIREMENT ACCOUNTS (“IRAs”)
Beginning in 2025, individuals must begin taking withdrawals from IRAs they inherited in 2020 or thereafter. The Internal Revenue Service has finally provided guidance on the implementation of the “ten-year rule” that was part of the Secure Act of 2019 (“Secure Act 1.0”). The Secure Act 1.0 was enacted to…
NEW JERSEY SUPREME COURT TAKES A SURPRISING APPROACH TO ADDRESS A DECEDENT’S LACK OF ATTENTION TO DETAIL AFTER GETTING DIVORCED
In a recent New Jersey Supreme Court case, Matter of Estate of Jones, 25 N.J. 584 (2025), a unanimous court found that a decedent’ s ex-wife was entitled to retain United States savings bonds that the decedent owned and that designated her as the beneficiary, notwithstanding the fact that the…
IRS proposes new “clawback” regulations
There is a computational quirk (that tax lawyers call “clawback”) in the manner in which the federal estate tax is calculated. What is “clawback” of estate tax? Because the estate tax and the gift tax are accumulated into a single “transfer” tax, a problem occurs when the lifetime exclusion from…
Company Owned Life Insurance and Buy-Sell Agreements
In Connelly v. U.S., USDC ED MO, Case No. 4:19-c-01410, September 21, 2021, the District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri held that company-owned life insurance on the life of a deceased shareholder that was used to redeem the deceased shareholder’s shares increased the fair market value of the…
Could dramatic estate tax changes be looming?
As was reported in our newsletter dated September 16, 2021, House Ways and Means Democrats Proposed Changes (link), the Ways and Means Committee of the United States House of Representatives (the principal tax writing committee) recently proposed substantial tax changes. Several of the provisions in the bill could have a…
Other Recent NJ Estate Legislation
On January 19, 2016, Governor Christie signed 93 bills just before the 2014/2015 legislative session deadline ended. Bills that were not signed by noon on January 19th would have expired and would have needed to be reintroduced in the new legislative session. Nevertheless, among the bills signed are several affecting the…