John O’Connell Interviewed by ThinkAdvisor: The Estate Tax Exemption Cliff Is No More. Now What?
John O’Connell was recently featured in a ThinkAdvisor Q&A on estate planning now that the estate tax cliff has been repealed. For two years, advisors prepped clients for a 2026 deadline that would have halved the exemption. Then the One Big Beautiful Bill Act erased the sunset and set it permanently at $15 million per person. John’s core point was that the underlying planning still holds up, so advisors shouldn’t apologize for urgency that was justified at the time. His advice is to reopen every plan built during the sunset years and check it against current law. The deeper lesson is to build a planning cadence around the client’s actual life rather than the next legislative deadline, because another one is coming.
