Forbes recently published an article Where Estate Planning Is Headed: The 2027 Heckerling Agenda by Matthew F. Erskine, JD which I found informative and an aligned articulation of my perspective. The main thrust of the piece is that while tax avoidance will always have its place in the conference, the scheduling is dramatically different than past years.
The author notes, “The topics the Institute chooses tends to track what is actually landing on our desks, not what we wish were landing there.” I really like this framing, as it grounds the analysis in first principles and does so with a knowing wink.
So, what do these tea leaves show for the current state? “It reflects a profession quietly shifting its center of gravity away from transfer tax avoidance and toward administration, family conflict, unusual assets, and professional judgment under pressure.”
Mr Erskine summarizes six themes noted below, with each getting a well-portioned overview. We have been living and seeing and hearing similar sentiments from our own kitchen table conversations, from the families we serve, and from our partners in the wealth management, estate planning, and tax accounting spaces.
- The estate tax is no longer the main event
- Yesterday’s irrevocable trusts are today’s problem
- Fiduciary risk has become the center of the program
- Unusual assets get their own hour
- Families no longer fit the forms
- AI arrives as an ethics question
Modern families are no longer 2.5 kids, a dog, and a picket fence. Assets are no longer just the home and the bank account. Legal documents drafted on a typewriter could not contemplate today’s realities. Without serious change now, the only industries who win are the lawyers, the tax man, and the courts. We are sleepwalking into The Great Probate.
The Business of the Family needs to be run like a business: Improved family conversations and intentionality during scheduled meetings at the Kitchen Table. Organized operational paperwork such as wills, trusts, POAs, insurance policies, etc. Assets and liabilities accounted for with appropriate transparency, accountability, and reporting. Think the same level of effort for a $2M local business, with comparable ceremonies.
Again we quote, “the agenda carries a message. The profession is being asked to do less tax arbitrage and more stewardship: fixing trusts built for a different world, administering assets that do not fit on a brokerage statement, guiding families that do not fit the statutory defaults, and preserving human judgment as the tools change. That is harder work than exemption planning, and considerably less amenable to a form. It is also, for most of our clients, where the value is.”
Change is hard, but that’s OK, as this reframing brings about work that has a nobility we can serve for decades. We believe that over the course of weeks, months, and even years, families can help themselves get and remain organized so that they can make and save more money. But the real treasure? A clearer idea on how the family is thriving via improved financial outcomes coupled with reduced family conflict via reduced to false assumptions and stories. This is the way. Together, we can move our families forward…