Dear Mr. Premack: I hired a skilled estate planning attorney to write wills for my wife and I about 15 years ago. He is no longer in practice, and we have not reviewed our wills with an attorney since then. As I read them, here is my concern: they seem to require that when one of us dies, part of the estate goes into a family trust and part might go into a marital trust. I can’t really tell by reading the legalese exactly how much would go into each trust, but I don’t remembe

Dear Mr. Premack: I have had a falling out with one of my sons. He lives in another state, so when I met with my lawyer to do a new power of attorney, I chose my daughter as agent. She lives just around the corner from me and is always available. My son says that he should be the person in charge if something would happen to me, and won’t listen to my reasoning at all. He’s become unreasonable and angry. I’m afraid he’ll try to grab control from her if I end up in the hospita

Dear Mr. Premack: We all know that Congress finally passed a new tax law, even though they haven’t addressed other important issues. I’ve read a lot about the law’s income tax effects but not much about the estate and gift tax effects. Since you are an expert on estate planning, can you tell me what the new law does to estate and gift taxes? – G.V. This turmoil in the tax laws began when the “Bush tax cuts” were first enacted through the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconci