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 NOVEMBER 2012 |
Judicial Election: New York & Bronx County Surrogates
Rita Mella was elected as New York County Surrogate, joining Nora S. Anderson as the two County Surrogate's. Nelida Malave-Gonzalez was elected as Bronx County Surrogate. Judge Mella was previously elected to New York County Civil Court and currently presides in Criminal Court. Judge Malave-Gonzalez currently sits in the Bronx Supreme Court. Both judges' candidacies were approved by the City Bar's Judiciary Committee. The new Surrogates will begin their terms January 1, 2013.
CLE Programs
T & E Issues in Marriage Equality
Monday, November 12, 6:00 pm-8:00 pm
To Infinity & Beyond: Hot Topics Affecting Estate Litigators
Tuesday, November 27, 6:00 pm-9:00 pm
Successful Art Succession: Advanced Estate Planning Considerations
Tuesday, December 4, 6:00 pm-9:00 pm
Missed a Program? You Can Still Benefit! CLE Programs' CDs, DVDs and other course
materials can be found on the website.
Specified Foreign Financial Assets
The Committee on Estate and Gift Taxation submitted comments to the IRS on proposed regulations which pertain to the required reporting of specified foreign financial assets (SFFA) on Form 8938. In the letter, the Committee makes a number of recommendations on the various proposals including: broadening language to exclude from the definition of specified domestic entities certain domestic trusts not required to file U.S. income tax or information returns; extending the exception to the definition of specified domestic entities for certain domestic trusts to include entities owned by the specific domestic entity; providing that a specified person is not required to report a SFFA on Form 8938 for a particular tax year if such SFFA is reported on a timely filed Form 8858 for that year; and limiting the application of the reporting requirement for certain domestic discretionary trusts.
Deceased Spousal Unused Exclusion Amount
In a joint letter to the IRS, the Committees on Trusts, Estates and Surrogate's Courts and Estate and Gift Taxation provided comments on the proposed and temporary regulations on the portability of the deceased spousal unused exclusion amount. The letter specifically suggests that the proposed regulations be modified to prevent a surviving spouse from sustaining an unfair hardship where an executor who has been appointed for the deceased spouse’s estate has not filed an estate tax return to make (or to affirmatively opt out of) a portability election as of the due date for filing the decedent’s estate tax return, and the surviving spouse has an application pending as of such filing deadline with a U.S. probate court to obtain limited letters authorizing him/her to file an estate tax return for the decedent’s estate in order to make the portability election.
Committee Involvement--It's Never too Late
Committees are how the City Bar’s work gets done. Working on a committee can give you great experience while opening up a number of career doors, some you may not even anticipate.
A full list of the City Bar committees along with a brief description of each and an application form can be found on the City Bar’s website. As a number of City Bar committees have more applicants than available slots, please consider applying to more than one committee.
