Addressing and Fixing Estate Planning Mistakes FLEXCAST
Available Until
Your Desk
1.0 Credits
Member Price $49.00
Non-Member Price $56.00
Overview
Estate plans fail in predictable ways: no plan at all, a plan that’s outdated, or a plan that ignores how assets actually transfer. In this course, Steven Siegel walks through the most common estate planning mistakes that create tax inefficiency, family conflict, and avoidable administration, then shows how to spot them and fix them before they turn into litigation, missed elections, or irreversible distributions. You’ll cover practical review checkpoints, plus higher-impact technical issues: portability and timely Form 706 filings, life insurance ownership and beneficiary pitfalls, SECURE Act distribution traps, trust design choices, GST planning gaps, charitable substantiation and property-type rules, business succession and buy-sell valuation landmines, and income tax planning for trusts and estates. The result is a clean framework for diagnosing estate planning breakdowns and implementing corrective strategies that hold up under real-world client complexity.
Highlights
Addressing and fixing estate planning mistakes.
Prerequisites
None.
Designed For
CPAs and tax professionals.
Objectives
Identify common estate planning failure points, including missing documents, outdated provisions, and non-probate transfer oversights. Evaluate portability and post-mortem decision requirements, including timing considerations and risks of failing to elect DSUE. Distinguish major beneficiary designation and distribution planning issues for life insurance and retirement accounts, including SECURE Act implications and trust-beneficiary tradeoffs. Apply corrective strategies for fiduciary/guardian selection problems, divorce and marital-right issues, and special needs beneficiary planning. Recognize planning gaps involving GST, charitable contributions, and business succession arrangements that can create unintended tax and valuation consequences. Identify key income tax planning opportunities for estates and trusts, including distribution timing techniques and avoidance of compressed trust tax brackets.
Preparation
None.
Notice
This is a FlexCast (no exam required) and may be viewed only Monday - Saturday, 5am - 5pm PT. You may take up to one year from the date of purchase to complete the course. Pause your FlexCast and resume at a convenient day during the hours above. Partial credit for 2+ credit courses: If you are unable to complete the course in one sitting, partial credit can be awarded (minimum of one credit). To earn the remaining credits, you must return later and start the course from the beginning. Use chat to ask questions of a subject matter expert during the program.
Leader(s):
Leader Bios
Steven Siegel, Western CPE
Steven G. Siegel, JD, LLM, is president of The Siegel Group, which provides consulting services to attorneys, accountants, business owners, family offices, and financial planners. Based in Morristown, New Jersey, the Group provides services throughout the United States.
Steven is the author of many books, including: The Grantor Trust Answer Book (2018 CCH); The Adviser’s Guide to Financial and Estate Planning(AICPA 2019); Federal Fiduciary Income Taxation (Foxmoor 2019); and Federal Estate and Gift Tax (Foxmoor 2016). He is also a co-author with Richard Oshins, Esq. of The Anatomy of the Perfect Modern Trust, Estate Planning Magazine January and February 2016.
In conjunction with numerous tax-planning lectures he has delivered for the National Law Foundation, Steven has prepared extensive lecture materials on the following subjects: planning for an aging population, business entities, preparing the audit-proof federal estate tax return, business acquisitions, representing buyers and sellers in sale of a business, dynasty trusts, planning with intentionally defective grantor trusts, estate planning, S corporations, divorce, and many others.
Steven has delivered hundreds of lectures to thousands of attendees in live venues and via webinars throughout the United States on tax, business, and estate planning topics on behalf of numerous organizations, including Western CPE, the Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning, Notre Dame Tax and Estate Planning Institute, CCH, National Law Foundation, AICPA, Yale School of Management, University of Chicago Business School, the National Society of Accountants, Cohn-Reznick, Foxmoor Education, many state CPA societies and estate planning councils, and on behalf of private companies.
He’s presently serving as an adjunct professor of law in the graduate tax program (LLM) of the University of Alabama School of Law, and he has served as an adjunct professor of law at Seton Hall University and Rutgers University law schools.
Steven holds a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa); a juris doctor from Harvard Law School; and an LLM in taxation from New York University Law School.
Non-Member Price $56.00
Member Price $49.00