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Issue 49 – October, 2026
NAEPC Journal of Estate & Tax Planning
Mavis N. McKenley, CTFA, AEP®, CFP®
AMG National Trust
Virginia Beach, VA 23462
Welcome to Fall! We hope you enjoy another informative publication filled with original content contributed by estate planning professionals from across the country.
For 20 years, this publication has provided a forum for professionals from across the country to share original ideas and practical insights. This year, we are especially grateful to have received a record number of original submissions. In this issue, you will find a terrific range of topics, from CRUTs and Social Security to the challenges presented by unique and concentrated assets, and much more.
We are also pleased to welcome many new affiliated estate planning councils to our growing audience. As part of that growth, we are introducing Council Corner, a new feature created specifically for our councils. We want to hear from you. Share your experiences, ideas, successes, and thoughtful content so that others throughout the estate planning community can benefit.
Our feature article in this issue comes from Harvey Hutchinson, who speaks directly to our councils about the positive impact that sponsorship income can have. His contribution is particularly fitting as we expand the opportunities for councils to learn from and engage with one another.
As always, I invite you to enjoy the depth and variety of the content we have prepared for you this fall. I also extend my sincere thanks to my co-editor, Katherine Sheehan, the entire volunteer Publications Committee, our contributors, and everyone who has supported this publication over the past 20 years.
Thank you for reading, contributing, and helping us continue to strengthen the estate planning community.
Council Corner
Sponsorship Income: The Transformational Strategy That Elevates (and Complicates) Estate Planning Councils
Having served as a director or officer with a couple of local estate planning councils and serving six years on the board of the National Association of Estate Planners & Councils (NAEPC), I have witnessed the positive impact sponsorship income has on the local council and its leaders. When a council’s financial position moves from one of survival to one of strength and possibility, the vision of the council’s leaders begins to expand and include implementing professional member attraction and retention strategies, coupled with enhanced delivery on the council’s mission. However, council leaders need to be aware that certain agreements or actions taken with sponsors may give rise to tax liability (i.e., unrelated business income tax (UBIT)) or corrective measures, particularly if their council is established as a tax-exempt entity.
Author: Harvey A. Hutchinson III, JD, LL.M. (taxation), CFP®, AEP®
Features
How a Young Donor’s CRUT Keeps Paying After an Early Death
A charitable remainder unitrust (CRUT) normally stops paying when the measuring life ends. The Treasury regulations, however, expressly permit a CRUT to pay for the longer of a life or a fixed term of up to 20 years. Under that longer-of period, an early death does not end the payout: named successors receive the unitrust amount for the balance of the guaranteed term. For younger donors, the protection is inexpensive, and no commercial insurance product replicates it. But qualification, gift, estate, and generation-skipping consequences must be modeled before the instrument is signed.
Author: Klaus Gottlieb, JD
Breaking the Myth About When to Claim Social Security Benefits
Social Security retirement benefits (hereinafter “SSRB”) are available to most workers in the United States. Social Security is a government program that collects payroll taxes during a worker’s career and distributes benefits during retirement. For many individuals, SSRB is an important component of a comprehensive retirement plan. The governing Social Security rules discussed herein are found in 42 U.S. Code Section 402, et seq.
Author: Lawrence J. Macklin, CPA, JD, AEP®
The Estate Plan Is Signed. The Client Is Not Moving.
This article looks at a pattern many estate planning teams see but rarely name directly: a signed, funded plan that the client still has not put into motion. The article argues that the reason for the delay is not what it is often assumed: legal or financial. The issue instead is personal; specifically, the client has not worked out who they are once money, property, and authority they have held is transferred to someone else. Apart from the existential concerns the person begins to have when considering issues around their purpose in life and their legacy, many individuals have not resolved identity questions that often arise when thinking about the next stage of life. Finally, the article offers a framework for estate planning teams to recognize this gap and a referral step for closing it that does not add scope to the estate planning engagement itself.
Author: Joy Levin, CPRC
“Rainy Day” Savings and the Long-Term Care Storm
The middle-class long-term care funding gap is often mischaracterized as a matter of how much a household has saved relative to their anticipated cost of care. It is better understood as a matter of form that such savings take. Middle-class households often hold their net worth in a home and a retirement account—assets that are illiquid, tax-encumbered, or, in the case of the home’s equity, exempt from Medicaid’s reach (up to a limit) yet difficult to access without selling or causing some unintended consequence. Long-term care demands immediate and sustained cash flow, and eligibility for institutional Medicaid turns not only on the value of an applicant’s assets, but on the nature of the assets themselves. This article examines that mismatch and analyzes the Medicaid Compliant Annuity as a mechanism for converting problem assets into a compliant income stream, providing respite from a storm of long-term care expenses that would otherwise ravage an applicant’s finances.
Author: Scott M. Engstrom, JD
Deep Roots: Estate Planning for a Working Family Forest
When a family forest passes by deed from one generation to the next, the agreements attached to that land may run for multiple generations to come.The gap between the speed of a title transfer and the long tail of contracts, easements, and commitments that stay with the land is where estate plans for working forests most often fall short. The plan identifies the land, names the beneficiaries, and addresses taxes and liquidity. What it may not do is answer the questions that arrive six months after a funeral, when heirs discover they have inherited not just acreage, but promises.
Author: Lindsey Morgan, JD
Why Smart Clients Procrastinate on Estate Planning and Trust Funding
Estate planning professionals regularly encounter intelligent, well-informed clients who understand what they need to do but still delay important decisions, conversations, and implementation. This article explores why procrastination is often not an information problem, but a readiness problem, and examines the human factors that can stand between understanding and action. It identifies five human capacities that support client readiness and offers practical ways professionals can build support for readiness into the planning process, helping clients face difficult decisions and move from understanding to action.
Author: Rick Solomon
Planning Solutions for Unwinding Your Concentrated Stock
Concentrated stock, regardless of how acquired, results in a disproportionate allocation of wealth, and can expose taxpayers to considerable risk. Many clients hesitate to sell concentrated stock, whether attained through inheritance, executive compensation, or merely purchased years ago and held due to steep tax implications.
Authors: Emily Broxup, CFP®, ChFC®, Andrew S. Manganelli, MST, CFP®, ChFC®, RICP®, and Fred Ulbrick, CFP®, CIMA
Using Charitable Remainder Trusts to Minimize Tax Exposure in the Greatest Intergenerational Wealth Shift
Over the coming decades, the Baby Boomer generation will transfer tens of trillions of dollars to heirs, charities, and institutions, both in the United States and globally. This unprecedented shift of wealth presents an extraordinary opportunity, but also a significant risk, unnecessary taxation due to inadequate planning.
Author: Charles J. McLucas, Jr., CPA/PFS, AEP®, CKA
Due Diligence for Pooled Trusts
There are numerous forms of pooled investment vehicles, such as real estate investment trusts and commodity pools. One distinct form with unique uses in the estate planning landscape is pooled trusts operated by non-profit organizations. As non-profit entities they are charged with trust administration services for first party and third-party special needs trusts, settlement preservation, and third-party minor’s trusts for beneficiaries. Each such pooled trust option operates under a single master trust agreement. They present options and considerations that differ materially from both conventional “standalone” trusts and for-profit corporate trustees. Pooled trusts provide special needs trust services to clients with a disability and for individuals such as minors and adults who are vulnerable but not under a disability, by offering settlement preservation and third-party minor’s trust opportunities.
Author: Ben Tiefenback, JD, LL.M.
Red Lights: Items that Estate Professionals Should Watch for in Oil, Gas, and Mineral Interests
Many estate planning professionals have had clients with oil, gas, and mineral interests, and despite the frequency with which they may appear in the client’s portfolio, the professional and the client alike struggle to figure out what to do next with these unique and challenging assets. The client may have inherited it from a parent, a check arrives a few times a year, and no one has reviewed any deeds, looked into any of the details, division orders, or lease offers, etc. in decades. Oil & gas exists as real property, many times in a county the client has never visited, governed by contracts signed before the client was born, producing income that starts and stops for reasons no one explains, and it has the potential to create more headaches and lack of understanding than anything else in the estate
Author: Wes Turiano
Critical Tax Implications for Estate Planning With Unmarried Couples
Estate planning for unmarried couples presents unique challenges and opportunities, particularly through the lens of federal taxation. This article examines those challenges and opportunities and explores areas where estate planners in all fields might wish to give special attention.
Author: Peter Holstead Davies, JD, LL.M. (taxation), AEP®
Suitability, Best Interest and Fiduciary Duty: The Standards Differences That Need to be Understood
During a conversation with a new client and their advisors, I was asked about the differences regarding the standard of care owed regarding life insurance transactions. This article breaks down the differences, who they apply to and who owes what duty in real-world practice.
Author: William J. Boersma, CLU®, LIC, AEP®
Living Fully, Planning Thoughtfully: Moving Beyond the Technical in End-of-Life Conversations
As estate planning professionals, we spend our time helping clients prepare for the inevitable – death. Sometimes we must break the news to them that it is not a question of “if” but rather of “when.” We draft documents, structure wealth transfers, and try to anticipate eventualities with technical precision. Yet, for all our expertise, we often sidestep or downplay the most human, and arguably the most important, aspect of planning: what it means to live well at the end of life, and how to ensure that vision is known, respected and carried out when one is no longer able to communicate for oneself.
Author: Kim V. Heyman, JD, LL.M. (taxation), AEP®
Financial and Estate Planning for People with Alzheimer’s Disease: 2026 Updates
Since 2023, disease-modifying anti-amyloid therapies have become clinically available for early-stage Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and blood-based biomarkers have accelerated diagnostic precision. In parallel, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) expanded coverage for PET imaging and restructured Medicare Part D for 2025, reshaping affordability and cash-flow considerations for affected families. This article reviews key post-2022 developments in AD diagnostics, treatment access, and coverage policy, and introduces a financial planning framework—integrating care navigation, budgeting, and estate and benefits coordination—to support advisors working with clients impacted by AD.
Author: Bronwyn L. Martin, PhD, MBA, ChFC®, CLU®, CLTC®, CRPC®, CFS®, CMFC®, AEP®, LACP
When Farmland Is the Fortune: A Framework for Advisors
Farmland can be a family’s largest asset, its operating business, and its legacy all at once. That combination makes succession planning unusually difficult, especially when heirs have different roles and the estate has little liquidity, unclear successors, and delayed decision-making. This article offers a practical, values-first approach known as the LAND VALUES framework, and a “return on life” perspective, which estate planning professionals can use to guide families from uncertainty to action: defining “fair” in workable terms, mapping liquidity and timing constraints, clarifying who decides what and comparing a small set of “least-regret” pathways (hold, lease, restructure, conserve or sell). The goal is to help families make technically sound decisions that preserve both financial outcomes and relationships.
Author: Johnny Klemme
From Fort Sumter to Modern Planning: The Early Evolution of Life Insurance
Historically, many insurers excluded deaths occurring during military service. Today, that varies by insurer and policy type.
Authors: Jerry D. Coats, CLU®, ChFC®, AEP®, CAP® & Isaiah C. Edison, CFP®, ChFC®, CLU®, CLTC®, AEP®, RICP®
Publish your own original article in the NAEPC Journal!
We are always in search of original articles related to the profession of estate planning and disciplines within and are now collecting content for the next issue. Submissions are invited from estate planning professionals, estate planning council members, and Accredited Estate Planner® designees.
