In this article, our McHenry County estate tax lawyers explain how estate tax works and some of the tools that we use to help our clients avoid it. Estate tax is taxed on both the federal and state level.  The Illinois estate tax exemption is $4 million. Our McHenry County estate tax attorneys use AB Trusts to allow married couples to take advantage of one-another's exemptions.  We use Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts (ILITS) to remove your life insurance death benefit from your taxable estate.  We also use Grantory Retained Annuity Trusts, Grantor Retained Unitrusts, and Grantor Retained Income Trusts (GRITs, GRATs, and GRUTs) to allow business and real estate assets to accumulate in value wihtout the accumulated value being included in the taxable estate.

Read the full article by our McHenry County estate tax lawyers explaining estate tax planning strategies.

In this article, our McHenry County estate tax lawyers explain how to use trusts to avoid probate. In addition to estate tax avoidance, your estate planning strategy should include probate avoidance. Probate is a court case that is required to distribute assets if you own any real estate outside of a trust or more than $100,000.00 outside of a trust or payable on death accounts when you pass. Our McHenry County estate tax attorneys use revocable and irrevocable trusts to ensure that your loved ones do not have to pay costly attorney fees and court costs for probate when you pass.

Read the full article by our McHenry County estate tax attorneys explaining how we use trusts to avoid probate.

In this article, our McHenry County estate tax lawyers explain how the recent increase in the federal estate tax exemption will impact your estate planning in Illinois. Although the federal estate tax exemption was increased from $5.5 million to $11 million, the Illinois estate tax exemption remains at $4 million. This means that estate tax planning will remain important for Illinois residents if their combined assets including death benefit from their life insurance policies are likely to approach $4 million in the next several years.

Read the full article by our McHenry County estate tax lawyers explaining the increased federal estate tax exemption.