Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLATs) – Key Planning Tool

Course Description: SLAT planning can provide tremendous planning benefits for many married clients. With proper tailoring for the current environment, a useful default estate and financial planning strategy is to employ non-reciprocal spousal lifetime access trusts (“SLATs”). This can provide a flexible framework for a wide range of clients and can achieve an array of planning goals. The technique can be adapted for modest estates needing life insurance trusts, to ultra-high net worth clients requiring more aggressive tax oriented estate planning. Regardless of what happens to the transfer tax system, some variant of SLAT planning may remain useful to clients. Considering special clauses and techniques to be discussed (hybrid DAPTs, loan provisions, floating spouse clauses, insurance provisions, etc.), SLATs can remain powerful, relevant and robust planning techniques for every planner’s tool kit.

Speakers: David Harrison Kirk National Tax Partner, Private Client Services at Ernst and Young (EY) and Martin Shenkman, Esq.