Planning for the Surviving Spouse FLEXCAST
Available Until
Your Desk
2.0 Credits
Member Price $98.00
Non-Member Price $113.00
Overview
When a client becomes a surviving spouse, the tax issues arrive fast, and they touch almost everything: the final 1040, filing status changes, basis and residence decisions, retirement distributions, portability, Social Security timing, and fiduciary administration, often while the survivor is grieving and vulnerable. This course gives practitioners a practical, advisor-ready framework for triaging the immediate questions, protecting the survivor from avoidable mistakes, and building a plan for the first two years after death and beyond. Taught by Steven Siegel, JD, LL.M. (Taxation), the course walks through the decedent’s final return and the joint-return decision, key elections and carryover traps, and planning for bracket compression after the shift to single filing. You’ll also cover estate-tax and portability strategy, including why a Form 706 may matter even when it isn’t required, plus core planning considerations around the home sale exclusion, retirement account options and common rollover pitfalls, and Social Security survivor-benefit planning.
Highlights
Planning for the surviving spouse.
Prerequisites
None.
Designed For
CPAs and tax professionals.
Objectives
Identify the primary tax and planning decisions that arise immediately after a spouse’s death and organize them into an actionable triage checklist. Determine key filing options and compliance requirements for the decedent’s final return, including when joint filing may (or may not) be advantageous. Apply planning concepts related to filing-status transitions and bracket changes, including strategies that may be considered while joint-filer rates remain available. Evaluate estate-tax considerations affecting the surviving spouse, including portability planning and circumstances where filing Form 706 may be beneficial. Compare surviving-spouse options for retirement plans and Social Security benefits, including common traps and timing decisions that can materially change outcomes.
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 $113.00
Member Price $98.00