Estate Planning when spouse holds a green card

[Lusitan]

Thanks for bringing up this topic, Tigam. This issue also affects our family and frankly I had no idea about the different treatment of non-citizen permanent resident spouses. I see now that I have a lot of homework to do.

Citizenship may be a more attractive option, after all. I have to look into this in detail.

 

[kcowan]

Last time I looked at this, the $2 million worldwide exemption was tied to a $60,000 exemption for US-based assets of the green-card holder. So if the home is held in joint tenancy and is worth $300k, then estate taxes would apply to 300/2-60=90k plus on any other jointly-held assets. Although these taxes are being phased out by 2010, currently they revert to original rates in 2011. The QDOT seems to be the preferred way to deal with this.

Although the $2 million would apply to the greencard holders share only, high inflation could make this an issue. IIRC the $60k exemption is $600k for a citizen. Citizenship might be the cheapest way.

 

[Elspeth]

Elsbeth, how do you find an attorney whom is really familiar with and good at resident alien spouse estate planning issues?

Thanks agian to all reading this!

We went to an attorney who was recommended by a British friend who had already been through the process of setting up a QDOT trust. We've moved out of that state in the meantime, and I think things are somewhat different on the East Coast compared with the community-property state where we started the process, but the lawyer says he can deal with that.

I assume you have some friends who are also Danish and are long-term residents in the USA, so you might just want to ask around and see if anyone can recommend a good attorney. I think it's important to find a lawyer who's familiar with this particular issue; it may not be safe to assume that any lawyer dealing with estate planning will know enough about the foreign-national issue to be helpful. When we moved to the east coast and started working with a financial guy out here, we said something about being in the middle of setting up one of these trusts. First he tried to get us to abandon our attorney in California and use one of his company's estate attorneys. A few days later he was on the phone with the helpful suggestion, "you guys ever thought of taking US citizenship?" which suggests that those estate attorneys of his didn't really know how to handle this sort of trust. So we're sticking with the one who does.