A Practitioner's Guide to Estate Planning in Washington [Part 1]

Estate planning in the broad sense is an individual's planning for the acquisition, conservation, use and distribution of his property. In the more restricted sense of the phrase with which we are here concerned, estate planning is an individual's planning for the most beneficial transfer and transmission of property to estate beneficiaries integrated with planning against unnecessary estate shrinkage. Such planning involves provision for efficient and prudent management, provision for estate liquidity sufficient to prevent unneccessary sacrifice of estate assets, provision for minimizing the costs of administration and management, and provision for minimizing income, gift, inheritance and estate taxation.