January 2 felt like a mix between the Twilight Zone and April Fool’s Day for us, and we suspect for most of our fellow estate planners (as well as for many of our clients). During prior years in our careers, we’ve had a few time-sensitive year-end matters to manage for clients, but the end of 2012 was far busier than any prior year in our combined 30 years of practice (we were coordinating with clients up until about 4 p.m. on New Year’s Eve). After inquiring with our colleagues, and as we recently learned from other estate planners at an annual estate planning conference we attended in Orlando, Fla., many have had similar experiences, recounting stories of coordinating with clients and their financial advisers on the very last day of the year.
We were extremely busy working with clients from right around Election Day until December 31 helping many assess whether to and how to capture the $5.12 million exemption from the federal gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer taxes for the benefit of their families before it was potentially reduced to $1 million on January 1 under the law as it then existed. And then, when we heard the news January 2 that Congress had increased the exemption to $5.25 million, we learned that all of the effort and stress for us and our clients was for no apparent immediate gain.
