LAW 287P - Estate Planning Practicum.

This course considers the principal tax and asset-management issues encountered in an estate planning practice. The course focuses on estate planning for both (i) persons of little to moderate wealth (whose primary concerns include using trusts or other arrangements to manage assets for beneficiaries, planning for the client’s incapacity, protecting family assets from creditors’ claims, planning for business succession, and minimizing the costs of estate administration); and (ii) persons of significant wealth (whose estate plans are designed primarily to accomplish tax-efficient inter-generational transfers of property). Students will acquire a solid grounding in estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxation. They will also be introduced to the special income tax rules that apply to trusts and estates and their beneficiaries. Students will also be exposed to the law of wills and trusts and the laws governing executors and trustees. All topics will be considered through the lens of simulated practice experiences, in which students will interview and counsel clients, draft estate planning documents, draft letters to clients, counsel executors and trustees, etc.

Students enrolled in the Estate Planning Practicum must also enroll in Estate and Gift Taxation (unless they already took Estate and Gift Taxation as a 2L). Estate and Gift Taxation will be taught on an accelerated basis during the first half of the semester. Students who simultaneously enroll in both Estate and Gift Taxation and the Estate Planning Practicum will receive a grade and credit for the practicum course only, and their grade in the practicum will be worth five credits. Students enrolled in the Estate Planning Practicum who took Estate and Gift Taxation as a 2L will receive three credits for the practicum course, not five. The workload for the practicum is equivalent to that of a three-hour practicum, to account for the two-hour workload associated with Estate and Gift Taxation. Five hours. Danforth