There is a lot of pretty misleading stuff out there on the estate tax (and on taxes in general).
The cost of estate planning varies around the country, but where I practice the average cost would probably be $2,000 -$3,000 for a couple with a couple of million in assets (that's for wills, revocable trusts, dpoas, living wills).
While nobody wants to spend $3,000 if they can avoid it, I don't think the cost is all that outrageous given that, even if they repealed the estate tax, most couples with $2,000,000 will need some estate planning anyway.
I figure the estate tax issue adds maybe $750 of cost to the package.
Now, there are families out there that spend $50,000 on estate planning, but these people tend to fall into two categories: (1) suckers; and (2) people with really enormous estates (i.e. $100,000,000 or more).
As far as the number of practitioners competent to do the work, I would say that in most urban areas there are hundreds of them. |
