Law Offices of Nancy Catalini Chew
Nancy Catalini Chew, Esq.
admitted to practice in MA and NH
270 Ayer Road, Post Office Box 0667
Harvard, Massachusetts 01451
(978) 772-2442 telephone
Deborah McHale Bushnell, Esq.
admitted to practice in MA
Alternative meeting location:
10 Common Road
Ashby, Massachusetts 01431
Dear Clients, Friends, and Colleagues:
December 2023
This annual calendar/newsletter mailing goes out to our new clients of 2023, any client who has specifically asked to receive this annual mailing on an ongoing basis after their first one, and to our professional colleagues. If you are a new client who enjoys this mailing and wishes to be included for subsequent physical mailings, please call or email us (admin@attychew.com) to stay on the distribution list. Otherwise, we post the annual letter to our website each December so you can stay up-to-date on the legal news, even if you do not receive a calendar in the mail.
Our staff looks forward to another year assisting you with your estate planning, elder law, probate, real estate, and mediation needs! Please don’t hesitate to contact us, and our wish is for a peaceful and healthy 2024 for all of you!
Nancy, Deb, Gina, Angela, Lisa, Erica, Jen B., Jen L., Doreen and Denise
HOLIDAY OFFICE CLOSURE, ONGOING FRIDAY CLOSURE, and CONTACT INFORMATION UPDATES
PLEASE BE ADVISED that the office will be closed Friday, December 22, 2023, at 5:00 p.m., and will reopen Tuesday, January 2, 2024, at 9:00 a.m. During that time, mail, voice mails, and emails will be monitored daily, but ONLY EMERGENCY messages will be returned. All non-emergency messages will be returned on January 2 and 3, 2024, in order of priority. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation as our staff is home for the holiday week, and we have a drop box by our front door if you wish to drop anything off during our holiday closure for us to see when we reopen.
PLEASE ALSO NOTE THAT WE ARE CLOSED TO WALK-IN TRAFFIC ON ALL FRIDAYS YEAR-ROUND NOW, AS OUR STAFF WORKS REMOTELY ON FRIDAYS. We are still working, answering emails and responding to phone calls and voice messages throughout the day on Fridays, but the physical office is closed to public access (our drop box outside the front door remains available, of course).
Please be reminded to call or email us (admin@attychew.com) with any address, telephone or email changes, and to notify us of any marriages, divorces, births, and deaths we should note in our files. It does not necessarily mean that any of your documents need to be amended solely to update this information, but we do want current information in your file, of course.
2024 ESTATE AND GIFT TAX NUMBERS
The federal estate tax thresholdis slated to increase from $12.92m per person in 2023 to $13.61m per person in 2024. As you may recall/note, the exemption amounts rise annually BUT are slated to reduce by more than one-half in a few years unless Congress acts in the interim. Based on their historic actions when this has occurred previously, we do expect them to act to ensure thresholds remain reasonable for the average taxpayer, but we will keep you apprised as we know more, of course.
We made important positive changes to our Massachusetts estate tax this fall, however! Our exemption threshold doubled to $2m, and estates in excess of that amount are only taxed at roughly 7-8% on the amount that exceeds $2m (we previously had a trigger to tax the entire estate if the threshold was exceeded, so this is momentous). This was made retroactive to deaths occurring January 1, 2023 or later, and is welcome and helpful news, after 20 years of staying at $1m. That being said, do not abandon your tax-minimizing trusts and strategies simply because the federal threshold is so high and because the State threshold was increased—you still gain from using your trusts to avoid probate and keep things simple for your families, so stick with the plan unless we discuss together and advise otherwise.
In addition, the annual gift exclusion will increase from $17,000/person/year (the amount in 2023 only) to $18,000/person/year as of 1/1/2024. This is the amount each person may gift to any other person annually without gift or estate tax consequences, BUT there are still long-term care consequences for any such gifts—even though they are tax-exempt—so be reminded to consult us prior to making any gifts at all if long-term care costs are a concern and/or on your horizon. Please keep in mind that this amount has increased by $1,000/year for the last few years, but it was a flat amount for several years and there’s no guarantee of an annual increase.
HOMESTEAD/TRUST OWNERSHIP REMINDERS
If you’ve refinanced or renewed a line-of-credit since your Declaration of Homestead was last updated, the most conservative approach is to re-file. It’s a quick and inexpensive process, but the benefits of protecting the equity in your home from creditors are well worth the effort.
In addition, if you wish to refinance and your property is held in a trust, lenders are currently preferring certain language be noted or even for property to be removed from trust temporarily, which we are happy to talk you through and make it easy and simple, if/as needed. Speaking of trusts, it is a common point of confusion that owning a property in a trust means that trust provides long-term care protection, but only certain types of trusts offer such protection, so if you assume you are protected, you might discover some day that you are not. We can double-check for you, if the work was done elsewhere, but if we did the legal work for you, that type of protection will be confirmed in your “Estate Plan Summary” that was included with your signed originals.
A reminder that we do provide certain niche services within our expertise areas of “estate planning and elder law” that many firms do not provide, should you be in need of such services. Specifically, both Massachusetts and federal estate tax return preparation and filing, real estate issues that arise in probate estates and trusts (including licenses-to-sell), Land Court filings and proceedings for those with Registered Land, mediation to assist families to find peaceful and informal resolution to their issues, and planning to protect inheritances for loved ones with special needs.
