Why does Estate Planning seem complicated?

Estate Planning is complicated by our desire to control people and things. We sometimes use planning to encourage certain behavior which we view as desirable and to discourage behavior we don’t like. Sometimes we don’t give certain persons control of money or assets because we don’t trust them (read we don’t trust their spouse) to make the decisions we would like see made. Sometimes we have very good reasons as our potential beneficiaries may have problems with drugs, alcohol, gambling or controling their spending.  They may be disabled due to cognitive or mental health programs. We may just want to control things because because we are a very controlling person who always wants things done their way. I have had clients who wanted to make it very difficult for their children to ever be able to sell the family farm. Clients want to save on estate taxes and we create trusts with some very specific limitations which the IRS tells us will allow the primary beneficiary not to have to include the value of those assets in their estate for estate tax purposes.  So is all that control needed? Sometimes yes–sometimes no.  Think about how much control you really need.