Key Takeaways
- A will does not avoid probate — and on a $10 million+ estate, that distinction alone can cost families hundreds of thousands of dollars in administrative fees.
- The federal estate tax exemption is now permanently set at $15 million per person ($30 million per married couple), indexed for inflation — but that number alone is not a plan, and the $30 million combined exemption does not happen automatically.
- Florida’s lack of state income and estate tax is a powerful advantage, but simply buying a home here is not enough to establish legal residency — and aggressive states will look hard at the evidence.
- Revocable trusts provide zero creditor protection while you’re alive. For married couples in high-risk professions, tenancy by the entirety may actually offer stronger protection than a revocable trust.
- High-net-worth estate planning requires coordinated communication between your attorney, CPA, financial advisor, and insurance agent — when those professionals aren’t talking to each other, costly gaps appear.
The Misconception That Costs Wealthy Families the Most
Most families with significant assets assume that once a will is drafted, the estate is handled. Tom Moss, an estate planning attorney with nearly three decades of experience at Sawyer & Sawyer, P.A., hears this assumption regularly — and it’s one of the most expensive mistakes a high-net-worth family can make.
The problem starts with what a will actually does. A will does not avoid probate. It provides instructions for probate — a court-supervised process that is both time-consuming and costly. On an estate of $10 million or more, the probate administrative bill alone can be substantial. Families who believe their will is protecting them from that process are in for a costly surprise.
The second common mistake — even among families who do have a trust — is failing to fund it properly. A trust that isn’t funded with the right assets is, as Tom puts it, just a stack of papers. The protections it’s supposed to provide simply never take effect.
For families across Orange, Lake, Osceola, and Seminole Counties — from Orlando and Winter Park to Windermere, Winter Garden, Dr. Phillips, and Horizon West — understanding these foundational issues is where effective high-net-worth planning begins.
What the New Federal Estate Tax Law Actually Changes
The recently passed legislation — informally called the “Big Beautiful Bill” — permanently raised the federal estate tax exemption to $15 million per person, or $30 million for a married couple, indexed for inflation going forward. For many families, that headline made estate planning feel suddenly less urgent.
Tom Moss’s response to that reaction is direct: estate planning for tax purposes became less urgent for some people. But estate planning itself never was primarily about taxes — and treating it that way misses a significant portion of what a well-constructed plan actually does.
Families still need planning for disabled children, spendthrift heirs, creditor exposure, children going through divorces, blended family dynamics, and multigenerational wealth transfer. None of those needs went away when the exemption went up.
For families whose estates do exceed the threshold, the math is unambiguous. As a single person, your $15 million exemption is reduced dollar for dollar by any lifetime gifts above the annual exclusion. If you die with $20 million, the first $15 million passes tax-free and the remaining $5 million is taxed at approximately 40% — a tax bill of roughly $2 million due to the IRS within nine months of death.
For married couples, the $30 million combined exemption doesn’t arrive automatically. It requires deliberate action at the first spouse’s death — either through a portability election or a credit shelter trust — and failing to take that action means losing the deceased spouse’s exemption permanently.
Why Florida Is a Magnet for Wealthy Families — and What They Get Wrong About It
Florida draws high-net-worth families for good reason: no state income tax, no state estate tax, and strong asset protection laws. Central Florida in particular has seen meaningful wealth creation over the past decade, with tech executives, healthcare entrepreneurs, and tourism industry leaders putting down roots across the region.
But there’s a persistent and costly misunderstanding about what it actually means to be a Florida resident for tax purposes. Many families assume that buying a home here is enough. It isn’t.
States like New York, California, and Illinois don’t give up their tax claims easily. When a high-net-worth individual claims Florida residency, those states will scrutinize the evidence: where you vote, where your cars are registered, where your driver’s license is issued, how much time you actually spend in Florida versus the prior state, and where your bills are sent. An unusually low Florida utility bill alongside a high New York utility bill is exactly the kind of inconsistency a state auditor will flag.
In an era of cell phone tracking and electronic records, Tom Moss notes plainly: it’s not that easy to be dishonest about where you live anymore.
What relocating families actually need to do goes well beyond buying property. It means refiling key legal documents under Florida law — a durable power of attorney is state-specific, and using a New York version in Florida will technically work, but it creates friction and expense for the family at the worst possible times. It means filing affidavits of domicile, reviewing and updating all prior estate planning documents, and revisiting funding formulas that may have been built around the laws of a different state.
Florida’s Asset Protection Tools — and How They Actually Work
Homestead Protection
Florida’s constitutional homestead protections are among the strongest in the country, but they come with rules that surprise families relocating from other states. For married couples — particularly those in second marriages — Florida law restricts how homestead property can be devised. A spouse who assumes “my will leaves everything to my kids” may not realize that Florida law automatically attaches certain rights to a surviving spouse when it comes to the primary residence.
Tenancy by the Entirety
For married couples, tenancy by the entirety is one of the most powerful and underused creditor protection tools available in Florida — and it’s frequently misunderstood.
Tenancy by the entirety is not the same as joint tenancy with right of survivorship, even though both put both spouses’ names on an asset. Under tenancy by the entirety, each spouse owns an undivided 100% interest. The critical distinction: a creditor who obtains a judgment against one spouse cannot reach an asset held this way — they would also need a judgment against the other spouse.
The practical application is significant for families in high-risk professions. A physician sued for malpractice above their insurance coverage cannot have their tenancy by the entirety assets touched unless the spouse is also found liable. That’s a powerful shield.
What many families don’t realize is that moving assets from tenancy by the entirety into a revocable trust can actually reduce that protection. Revocable trusts provide no creditor protection while the grantor is alive. For clients in high-exposure positions, Tom Moss sometimes recommends leaving assets titled in both spouses’ names with the trust named only as the beneficiary designation — preserving creditor protection while still ensuring the trust governs distribution at death.
LLC Planning
Florida LLCs can be effective asset protection tools, but the details matter significantly. Single-member LLCs in Florida do not receive the same charging order protection as multi-member LLCs. A client who assumes their single-member LLC fully protects their assets may be surprised to learn otherwise when it’s tested. The right structure — including whether Florida is even the right state for the LLC — depends on the specific situation and must be evaluated before any creditor threat emerges. Once a lawsuit is filed, any transfers made are considered potentially fraudulent and no longer serve a protective purpose.
The Tax Planning Toolkit for Estates Above $15 Million
For families engaged in high-net-worth planning with estates that exceed the federal exemption — or that are likely to grow there — Tom Moss works with several core strategies.
Portability
When the first spouse dies, the surviving spouse can file an estate tax return (IRS Form 706) to port the deceased spouse’s unused $15 million exemption. Done correctly, the surviving spouse now holds a $30 million combined exemption. The risk: portability must be filed promptly, and the emotional weight of loss can cause families to miss this window. If the surviving spouse later remarries, the ported exemption from the prior spouse is also lost.
Credit Shelter Trust
Rather than leaving everything outright to a surviving spouse — what Tom calls an “I love you” estate plan — a credit shelter trust holds up to $15 million at the first death in a trust structured to benefit the surviving spouse, who can even serve as trustee. The key advantage: those assets, and any growth on them, are not counted in the surviving spouse’s estate when they die. This strategy has been the cornerstone of estate tax planning for decades and complements the portability election rather than replacing it.
Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT)
Life insurance is a common blind spot in high-net-worth planning. Families who believe they’re right at the exemption threshold often haven’t counted their life insurance — because the policy hasn’t paid out yet. But when it does, those proceeds count toward the taxable estate.
An ILIT removes the life insurance from the taxable estate entirely. The trust owns the policy, and when the insured dies, the proceeds pay into the trust rather than into the estate. The surviving spouse and family can still benefit from the funds, but they pass outside the estate and are not subject to estate tax.
The numbers make the case: a $15 million non-insurance estate with a $5 million policy creates a $20 million taxable estate — and a roughly $2 million tax bill — without an ILIT. With one properly structured and funded, that problem disappears.
Dynasty Trusts and Generation-Skipping Transfer Planning
For families with substantial wealth, the estate tax doesn’t just strike once — it threatens to erode the estate at every generational transfer. A $100 million estate passes $30 million tax-free and pays 40% on the remaining $70 million — roughly a $28 million tax. When that generation eventually passes their inheritance down, the cycle begins again.
A dynasty trust is designed to interrupt that cycle. By allocating the $15 million GST (generation-skipping transfer) tax exemption to assets placed in the trust, those assets can remain sheltered across multiple generations — potentially for hundreds of years under Florida’s rule against perpetuities — without triggering estate tax at each death. The compounding effect of avoiding repeated generational taxation on a large pool of assets can preserve tens of millions of dollars that would otherwise be lost.
Planning Under Uncertainty: What “Permanent” Actually Means
Tom Moss is candid about one reality families need to understand: “permanent” in federal tax law only means permanent until Congress changes it. When he began practicing 27 years ago, the estate tax exemption was $675,000. The current $15 million figure represents a historically high point, and a future administration could change that.
His planning approach reflects that uncertainty. For clients with estates clearly above $30 million, the tax exposure is real regardless of what Congress does next, and proactive planning is essential. For clients hovering around $15–20 million, a more measured approach may make sense — taking meaningful steps without overcommitting to strategies that become unnecessary if the law holds.
The consistent message is that an estate plan is not a one-time transaction. Revisiting the plan annually — the same way a high-net-worth family meets with their financial advisor — is simply the cost of protecting what’s been built.
When Professionals Don’t Talk to Each Other, Families Pay the Price
For families engaged in high-net-worth planning, the estate plan doesn’t exist in isolation. It has to work in coordination with the financial advisor, the CPA, and the insurance broker. When those professionals operate in silos, the consequences range from inconvenient to devastating.
A trust that the financial advisor never knew existed means accounts are never retitled — and probate avoidance and creditor protection never actually take effect. An ILIT that was created but whose policy ownership was never transferred means the life insurance still counts in the taxable estate. A life insurance policy whose beneficiary was never updated from “spouse, then minor children” means that if both parents die, the minor children inherit millions at age 18 with no trust structure governing how it’s used.
And at the CPA level: if the portability election isn’t filed at the first spouse’s death because no one coordinated that responsibility, the deceased spouse’s $15 million exemption is gone. Permanently.
Tom Moss works directly with clients’ CPAs and financial advisors as part of the planning process. Beyond ensuring the technical pieces are in place, this coordinated team approach protects the surviving family in a different way: when a spouse or parent dies, the family already has a group of trusted professionals with institutional knowledge — not strangers they found in a moment of grief.
Plans Drafted Before 2025 May Need Immediate Review
Many estate plans drafted between 2017 and 2025 were built around an anticipated tax law sunset — the assumption that the estate tax exemption would drop significantly in 2026. That sunset did not happen. But the plans built around it may now have funding formulas that no longer serve the client’s actual intentions.
The most important thing to review in those documents is the funding formula for any marital or credit shelter trust. A formula designed to fund a trust up to a $5 million exemption now operates in a $15 million world — and depending on how it’s written, it may dramatically shift assets between trusts in ways the client never intended. Any family with a pre-2025 plan that includes formula-based trust funding should have that reviewed now.
What the First Conversation With Tom Moss Actually Looks Like
Before a first meeting, Tom Moss asks clients to complete a detailed intake covering every asset — type, ownership structure, value — as well as retirement plan balances, business interests, and family structure. Whether there’s a blended family, a second marriage, children from prior relationships, or any known issues with specific heirs all factor into what kind of planning is needed.
The first meeting is largely a listening session. From that information, the conversation moves to tax exposure, planning opportunities, and — for families near or above the threshold — specific tools that apply to their situation. For families right around $30 million, Tom notes there are actually some very practical options, including annual exclusion gifts (currently $20,000 per recipient) to multiple family members, and direct payments for private school or college tuition that can transfer wealth outside of the gift tax system entirely.
Don’t Let a Higher Exemption Become an Excuse to Wait
The families Tom Moss works with have typically spent years — often decades — building meaningful wealth. The goal of high-net-worth estate planning is to make sure all of that effort doesn’t erode through probate, unnecessary taxation, family conflict, or the absence of a plan at a critical moment.
The higher exemption creates more room to plan thoughtfully. It does not eliminate the need to plan.
Tom Moss and the team at Sawyer & Sawyer, P.A. serve families throughout Orange, Lake, Osceola, and Seminole Counties — including Orlando, Winter Park, Windermere, Winter Garden, Dr. Phillips, and Horizon West — with advanced estate planning, trust design, asset protection strategies, and coordinated professional guidance.
Ready for a comprehensive review of your estate plan?
Call Sawyer & Sawyer, P.A. at 407-909-1900 or schedule your advanced estate planning consultation at sawyerandsawyerpa.com/contact-us. The exemption may be higher — but it isn’t a plan.
