Premium Membership 
Free Membership
Protecting Your Assets Limiting Liability in Your Business Structure Planning for Federal Estate Taxes Estate Tax Basics The Unlimited Marital Deduction
Back
Share this!
PrintThe Unlimited Marital Deduction
Among the basic tenets of estate taxation, this deduction allows an individual to give during life, or at death, an unlimited amount to a spouse, free of estate and gift taxes. This is termed the "unlimited marital deduction" and is separate from the regular "unified" exemption or the new "gift" exemption.
However, the unlimited martial deduction is deceiving. If everything is left to the spouse to take advantage of the unlimited exemption, a problem arises. The surviving spouse has no spouse and, thus, no unlimited marital deduction.
Moreover, if the surviving spouse remarried and then left everything to the new spouse, few individuals would find this a satisfactory solution either.
Thus, without adequate estate planning, the family will still end up passing on a significant portion of the family's fortune to the federal government when the other spouse dies.
