The Conner-Zaritsky 43rd Annual Advanced Estate Planning and Administration Seminar 2022 (USB Seminar)

This session will cover significant tax developments.

Virginia Developments in Estate Planning and Administration
Katherine E. Ramsey

This session will review of significant state law developments

There are many challenges and opportunities that confront owners of privately held (often family) businesses as they reach the point when they must consider appropriate succession planning. Succession planning is an area too often put off by the persons who most need to address it. This presentation will review successful techniques to minimize taxes and pay for those that remain, facilitate orderly leadership changes, and position the business for future success.  This presentation will also address issues such as control and cash flow for the business owner, dealing with family members in the business and family members not in the business, incenting key employees, and exit strategies.

This session will discuss a range of topics of current interest in the ethics arena, including dealing with incapacitated clients (Rule 1.14), dealing with client documents (Rule 1.15), communications and confidentiality concerns due to remote lawyering (Rules 1.4 and 1.6) and other areas.  The speaker will address the upcoming 7th Edition of the ACTEC Commentaries on the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which is expected to be published this year.

New types of digital property, including virtual currencies and non-fungible tokens, present challenges in estate planning, as well as in valuation and taxation. This presentation will provide an overview of cryptocurrency and NFTs and the statutes that govern their management and disposition, including privacy and access concerns.

Organizing an estate plan so assets can arrive at their intended destination without being confiscated by either transfer taxes or income taxes can be quite the chore. We will discuss some income tax ideas that estate planners should consider for retaining, obtaining, and sustaining income tax basis, and other ideas designed to prevent income tax encroachment on successful transfer tax planning strategies. The session will include some “can you do that?” questions, and some ideas that might become necessary to continue successful estate planning if the 2021 anti-grantor trust planning legislative proposals resurface.

Asset protection planning is a core aspect of the trusts and estates practice.  Often, as trusts and estates lawyers, we make assumptions about the impact of asset protection strategies in the real world of creditors’ rights.  This presentation will offer the viewpoint of a creditors’ rights lawyer on asset protection techniques commonly utilized by trusts and estates lawyers.  Further, we will analyze asset protection strategies with a focus on the utility and design of third-party trusts to protect family wealth.

This session will discuss the impact of DNA test kit surprises and assisted reproductive technology on estate planning, including (1) inheritance rights of newly discovered heirs, posthumously conceived children, and children born of donated sperm, eggs, or embryos; (2) stored reproductive material as client property; and (3) the changing definitions of family. We will also look at how tried and true rules of document construction and modification can affect a plan gone awry by an unexpected twist in the family tree.

This session will explore Rule 1.1’s competence requirement and Rule 1.6’s duty of confidentiality as they relate to the use of technology in the trusts, estates, and tax practice, with the aim of clarifying what the professionally responsible use of technology requires of practitioners. The presentation will discuss the following more specific topics, among others: what we need to know about the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology; what reasonable efforts to protect confidential information stored and transmitted electronically are; and how outside vendors and others fit into compliance efforts. The presentation also will address the extent to which our ethical obligations as tax preparers overlap with the Rules of Professional Conduct.

This lecture will address both typical and unusual administration issues that occur in the probate process overseen by the Commissioner of Accounts. Melinda Dickerson Hetzel, the Commissioner of Accounts for Loudoun County, and James P. Cox, III, editor of Estate and Trust Administration in Virginia (Virginia CLE®, 2019 ed.) and Harrison on Wills and Administration, will offer their perspectives on the best practices in administering a probate estate and anticipating and resolving administration issues.

This session will cover significant developments or topics of interest that may have arisen after the program and speakers are set for the coming year.

In this session, several of our speakers will respond to your questions.