Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Law
Marital Sharing Of Transfer Tax Exemptions, Kerry A. Ryan
Marital Sharing Of Transfer Tax Exemptions, Kerry A. Ryan
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article analyzes portability and its antecedents in order to distill a positive account of marital sharing oftransfer tax exemption amounts. Prior to 2010, the estate and gift tax exemption equivalent was a nontransferable, separate tax attribute of each spouse. A spouse could only access his or her spouse’s effective exemption by shifting property into the other spouse’s tax base. With the enactment of portability, Congress decoupled tax-free availability of a spouse’s unified credit from the necessity of a prior intra-spousal transfer. All that is required is an election by the decedent spouse, via the executor, to share the decedent’s …