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Tom Clancy’s Widow Prevails Over Kids From First Marriage In Estate Dispute

I often remark that you learn all the math you need for tax work by the fourth grade.  The math issue in this case is one of the rare exceptions.  If a share of an estate is exempt from estate taxes because it is going to benefit a surviving spouse, as in this case, or a charity and you use some of that share to pay the estate taxes, then that much does not qualify for the exemption.

So now you have a higher estate tax and if you pay some of that additional tax from the exempt share, you have an even higher tax and so on. A real accounting Einstein could solve the problem with algebra , but you can also grind it out by doing the computation over and over till it does not change.  Thanks to Goal Seek in Excel, it is really not that hard, but still, I would want at least an eighth-grader handling it.

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Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.