Pattie Christensen now maintains a presence in both Sandy and Provo to better serve her Salt Lake County and Utah County clients.

There are some exciting changes with the new estate tax law.

As you may have heard, the estate tax exemption is going up to $5,000,000 per person.

In addition, however, there are three more advances:

1. The combined between spouses is $10,000,000 without the need to worry about who dies first or how much value is in each spouse’s estate. This is referred to as “portability” meaning that whatever is not used on the first spouse’s death is carried over to the second spouse. (No need to equalize estates or worry if the “poorer” spouse dies first.)
2. The gift tax exemption during life is back in line with what you can leave on death. In other words, in 2011, you can make $5mil of taxable gifts in your lifetime without imposition of gift tax.
3. For GST gifts made in 2010, there is no GST tax exemption allocation needed (it is just set as an inclusion rate of zero – meaning no gst tax allocable to those gifts)

• Estate Planning
• Real Estate Law
• Corporate Law
• Regulatory Law