Offering trust administration services can be highly profitable and rewarding for your law practice. Attorneys providing legal services to fiduciaries in postdeath administrations can deliver more holistic “cradle to grave” care for estate planning clients and receive an additional steady source of income. However, this area of law is not without risks—the amount of time, attention to detail, and competence required in guiding fiduciaries through the administration process can leave an attorney vulnerable to malpractice claims and unhappy clients. 

From the issuance of Section 199A final regulations to COVID-19-related guidance under the Family and Medical Leave Act, we have recently seen some significant developments in estate planning and business law. To help you stay abreast of these legal changes, we’ve highlighted a few noteworthy developments and analyzed how they may impact your estate planning and business law practice.

Real property used in a taxpayer’s trade or business is excluded from the IRS’s definition of a capital asset, enabling taxpayers to take advantage of the generally more beneficial ordinary loss deduction rather than the capital loss deduction upon its sale. As the petitioners discovered in Keefe v. Commissioner, 2020 WL 4032469 (2d Cir. July 17, 2020), however, the treatment of a sale of real estate as a sale of business property rather than a sale of a capital asset needs to be backed up by the facts, and an incorrect characterization on a tax return can be quite expensive.