Estate Planning for Cryptocurrency: Access Is Ownership

Every other asset in an estate can be recovered by a fiduciary with the right paperwork. Cryptocurrency in a self custodied wallet cannot. Whoever holds the private key controls the asset, and if nobody holds it the asset is gone; industry estimates put a substantial share of all bitcoin as permanently inaccessible. For most assets the planning question is who gets it. For digital assets the first question is whether anyone will be able to get it at all.

The plan has four parts. An inventory of every coin, wallet, exchange account, NFT and staked position. Access instructions kept out of the Will, which becomes public in probate, and stored securely with the Will pointing to them, possibly through a multisignature wallet that spreads control. Express authority for the executor, trustee and agent under the state's fiduciary access to digital assets act, with a trust as the better holding vehicle for privacy and competent management. And tax: the Service treats crypto as property, it is included in the estate at date of death value with a stepped up basis, and broker reporting on Form 1099-DA began with 2025 transactions. Review the inventory annually. With cryptocurrency, you are the only one who can build the path for the people you leave behind.

The full piece is at turnipseed.law.

Power of Attorney or Guardianship: Choosing Who Decides Before a Court Does

If you cannot make decisions and have signed nothing, a judge decides who makes them for you, in public, at your expense, and the person appointed may not be the one you would have chosen. Wendy Williams, placed under a New York guardianship in 2022, has described the arrangement as feeling like a prison. A guardianship is what happens when nothing else is in place, and Florida courts must consider less restrictive alternatives first. A durable power of attorney and a health care surrogate designation are those alternatives.

Florida has rules that surprise people from other states. The power of attorney must be signed before two witnesses and a notary. Florida does not permit springing powers for documents signed after October 1, 2011, so the authority is effective when signed and the choice of agent has to be made with that in mind. Gifting, trust and beneficiary powers must be separately initialed or they are not granted. A health care surrogate, a living will and a HIPAA release complete the set, and a one page preneed guardian declaration names the person the court must appoint if a guardianship ever becomes necessary. A guardianship takes months. A power of attorney takes an afternoon.

The full piece is at turnipseed.law.

Protecting a Legacy: Trusts for a Child Struggling with Addiction

Parents of a child with a substance use disorder want to provide for that child the same as the others, and they know a lump sum arriving in the wrong month could be dangerous. Equal shares outright at a stated age do not fit. The foundation is a fully discretionary trust: the trustee decides when and how much to distribute, pays landlords, treatment centers and insurers directly, and under Florida law and the law of most states a creditor cannot compel a distribution the trustee may withhold. Spendthrift language keeps the interest from being pledged or sold.

Incentive provisions tied to treatment or employment can help, but rigid tests make the trustee a police officer; discretion with written guidance, a letter of wishes and authority to require testing and consult professionals works better. The trustee's job is harder than usual, so a corporate trustee paired with a family member or addiction professional as adviser, plus a trust protector who can replace the trustee, gives the plan a way to adapt over decades. If public benefits are in the picture the trust should be drafted as a supplemental needs trust. Explaining the plan to the child and the siblings is the hardest step and the one that most reduces litigation later.

The full piece is at turnipseed.law.

Family Business Succession: Lessons the Roys Never Learned

HBO's Succession ran four seasons on a founder who would not pick a successor. Real family businesses fail the same way more quietly: emotional ties, sibling rivalry, loyalty over competence, a founder who steps back in name only, and no timetable until a health scare. None of that is a legal problem, and none of it is solved by a document alone. It is solved by separating ownership from management, choosing successors on qualifications, training them years ahead and putting the hardest conversations in a family council rather than the kitchen.

The legal layer then makes the outcome stick. Buy-sell agreements fix what happens on death, disability or divorce, and after the Supreme Court's 2024 Connelly decision, insurance held by the company to fund a redemption increases the company's value for estate tax, so agreements drafted before then should be reviewed. Gifts and sales of nonvoting interests to trusts move growth out of the founder's estate while the founder keeps control, trusts keep the shares from being split among grandchildren, and section 6166 lets a qualifying estate pay the tax on the business over fourteen years. A succession plan does not require the founder to retire. It requires the founder to decide, in writing, what happens if he does not get to.

The full piece is at turnipseed.law.

The Intentionally Defective Grantor Trust: A Tax Advantaged Freeze

An intentionally defective grantor trust is deliberately drafted to fail the income tax rules while passing the estate tax rules. The assets are outside the grantor's taxable estate, but the grantor still pays the trust's income tax, which the Service has ruled is not a gift, so the trust grows without tax drag while the grantor's estate shrinks by the tax paid. Sales between the grantor and the trust are ignored for income tax, so the grantor can sell an appreciating business interest or real estate to the trust for a note at the applicable federal rate and recognize no gain.

Everything the asset earns above the note rate accrues to the beneficiaries free of transfer tax, and valuation discounts on entity interests lower the price. The cost is the loss of a basis step-up at death, which the Service confirmed in 2023 applies to grantor trusts, so the usual answer is a swap power that lets the grantor exchange cash for the low basis assets late in life. The technique fits someone with a taxable estate, an asset likely to appreciate faster than the federal rate, the liquidity to pay the trust's tax for years, and no need to get the asset back.

The full piece is at turnipseed.law.

Estate Planning in a Second Marriage

About four in ten new marriages involve a spouse who has been married before, and each brings a question a first marriage does not: how to take care of the new spouse and still leave what you intended to your own children. Leaving everything to the survivor and trusting the outcome is a gamble. A QTIP trust pays the spouse income for life and sends the remainder to the children the first spouse named, with no estate tax at the first death.

The rest of the checklist is where second marriages go wrong. Florida's elective share gives the survivor 30 percent of an estate that reaches revocable trusts and retirement accounts, so a plan that leaves less needs a marital agreement with a waiver. Florida homestead cannot be devised away from a surviving spouse without one. Beneficiary designations on insurance and retirement accounts override the Will, and a 401(k) must pay the spouse unless she signs a consent. Life insurance can equalize, stepchildren must be named to inherit, and a written list for personal property prevents most of the fights. The plan that nobody explained is the plan that gets contested.

The full piece is at turnipseed.law.

When a Spouse Is Not a U.S. Citizen: The Qualified Domestic Trust

A married couple can usually defer all federal estate tax until the second death. If the surviving spouse is not a United States citizen, the marital deduction is not allowed, green card or not. The qualified domestic trust restores it. Property passing to a QDOT qualifies for the deduction if at least one trustee is a U.S. citizen or domestic corporation, a bank serves or a bond is posted when the trust exceeds $2 million, and the executor makes the election. The tax is deferred rather than eliminated: income to the spouse is free of it, principal distributions and the balance at the spouse's death are taxed as part of the first estate, with a hardship exception.

A QDOT can be created after death by the spouse or executor before the estate tax return is filed. The alternatives are citizenship before the return is filed, lifetime gifts to the non-citizen spouse within the $194,000 annual cap for 2026, and reliance on the first spouse's own $15 million exemption for property left outright. Jointly held property also loses the usual half inclusion rule. None of this requires a change in anyone's immigration status; it requires documents that reflect the family as it is.

The full piece is at turnipseed.law.