New York Estate Planning Attorney

The New York estate tax cliff

New York's estate tax exemption is uniquely structured. If your taxable estate is at or below the exemption (~$7.16M in 2026), you pay no New York estate tax. If it exceeds 105% of the exemption, the exemption disappears entirely and the entire estate is taxed from the first dollar at NY's progressive rates up to 16%.

An $8M estate can owe roughly $670,000 in NY estate tax that a $7.5M estate owes nothing on. The cliff is the single most important planning constraint for affluent NY families and is solved primarily through lifetime gifting, ILITs holding life insurance outside the estate, and charitable bequests calibrated to land below the cliff.

Probate in NY Surrogate's Court

Surrogate's Court probate in New York is notoriously slow. Even uncontested estates routinely take 6–12 months between filing the petition, receiving letters testamentary, marshaling assets, paying claims, and accounting. Revocable living trusts genuinely avoid this process and are a more important tool in NY than in faster-probate states.

What we typically build for NY families

Core NY plans pair a pour-over will with a revocable living trust to avoid Surrogate's Court. We routinely layer ILITs for life insurance, SLATs for spouses with significant separate property, and out-of-state dynasty trusts (typically Delaware or South Dakota) to escape NY's rule against perpetuities and NY's income tax on accumulated trust income.