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Spousal Lifetime Access Trust The SLAT is a type of irrevocable trust used to transfer wealth outside your estate in whichone spouse creates a trust for the benefit of the other spouse and his/her heirs. The trustee of The Spousal Lifetime Access Trust (SLAT) has becomean increasingly popular estate planning technique formarried couples; it is of particular interest to those wanting The donor spouse can even allocate the exemption amountfrom the generation-skipping transfer tax (GST) to the Spouses interested in executing SLATs for each other’sbenefit need to be wary of the reciprocal trust doctrine,which allows the IRS to treat the gifts as if they had neverhappened. While there is no bright-line test to determinewhether the IRS will invoke the reciprocal trust rules,practitioners agree that a prudent approach is to make The SLAT is an irrevocable trust that one spouse createsfor the benefit of the other as well as for additional heirs;although it is irrevocable, the beneficiary spouse mayreceive distributions of income and principal from thetrust, allowing the couple to access the gifted assets.Typically, when irrevocable trusts are created, the donorrelinquishes all interest and access to the assets transferred With this in mind, it is vitally important to work withyour wealth advisor and tax professional to carefullydetermine the amount you can gift to the trust before youmake the transfer. Even with the spouse having accessto the trust, you should not count on the assets once In fact, both spouses can use their combined exemptionsand create SLATs to benefit the other, doubling theexemption amount sheltered from gift and estate taxes. Private WealthManagement SLATs may be a useful strategy forthose who reside in states with a stateestate tax. Even if you are not subjectto estate tax at the federal level,you may benefit from removing assets When properly structured, the assets in a SLAT are nottaxable in either spouse’s estate and are not available tocreditors. At the death of the beneficiary spouse, the assets For income tax purposes, SLATs are generally set up asgrantor trusts, meaning that during the donor’s lifetime,income will be taxed to the donor spouse on the donor’s taxreturn, rather than to the trust. These tax payments are In summary, SLATs have become a popular technique forusing the historically high federal estate tax exemptionwhile allowing access to the assets via the spouse’s interest spouse not request distributions from the SLAT unlessabsolutely necessary. It is important to note that your accessto the funds ends upon death or divorce since you will Since the spouse who creates the SLAT must give up allcontrol over the assets, he or she may not act as the trustee.In addition, if the beneficiary spouse acts as the trustee,distributions must be restricted to an “ascertainablestandard,” namely health, education, maintenance, orsupport. Naming an independent trustee, such as a trusted