Many couples spend years planning their weddings, while shielding their assets in the event of a divorce takes a back seat. Estate-planning practitioners often see the unfortunate results when this type of planning isn’t done. In past issues, we’ve covered strategies for helping clients create an estate plan that will protect both spouses whether a marriage continues or ends in divorce, as well as other domestic relations-type issues. But starting this month, we’ll have a new Domestic Relations Committee made up of both matrimonial and estate-planning attorneys to enable us to explore some of these issues in more depth across the two disciplines.
Sharon L. Klein of Wilmington Trust N.A. in New York City will chair this committee. She’s spoken and written extensively on the intersection between estate planning and matrimonial disciplines. To kick things off, she’s written a column for our Briefing section, “Warn Clients About Change in Taxation of Trust Income After Divorce,” p. 11, about the effects of the repeal of Internal Revenue Code Section 682 by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That section provided that the income distributed to a spouse after a divorce is taxable to the recipient and not the grantor.
Sharon’s fellow committee members are matrimonial attorneys and American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers fellows Mark A. Bank, a partner at Bank Rifkin in Birmingham, Mich. and Michael A. Mosberg, a partner at Aronson, Mayefsky & Sloane, LLP in New York City, as well as estate-planning attorney Catherine Grevers Schimdt, a partner at Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP in New York City.
This month’s issue also features our Committee Report on Elder Care, with articles on Medicare and how to spot signs of dementia in your clients.