Gift Splitting Can Be Tricky With SLATs

Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLATs) have become a popular vehicle for married couples who desire to shift wealth outside their taxable estates but still retain access to the transferred assets by virtue of the grantor naming his or her spouse as a beneficiary of the trust.  However, there are some tricky gift-splitting rules that apply to gifts to SLATs.  Click here to read our memorandum which highlights that the utilization of lifetime exemptions could be different for gift tax and GST tax purposes depending on the facts.