Estate Planning Cost Guide for $5M to $25M Net Worth

A married couple with a $20 million estate owed roughly $2.8 million in federal estate tax under 2024 law if both spouses died after the scheduled Tax Cuts and Jobs Act sunset. As of 2026, that same couple owes nothing. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed into law July 4, 2025 as Public Law 119-21, set the federal estate tax exemption at $15 million per individual and eliminated the sunset that would have cut it roughly in half. For households in the $5 million to $25 million net worth range, the entire planning calculus shifted in a single legislative stroke—and most coverage still hasn’t caught up to what that means for the dollars actually spent on trusts, gifting machinery, and legal fees.

This guide quantifies what estate planning costs that tier in 2026, what the federal exemption removes from the equation, and where the residual exposure still sits. The numbers below separate the tax liability—which the law just collapsed—from the planning cost, which did not.

The exemption that erased most of the liability

Start with the federal number, because it drives everything downstream. For decedents dying in 2026, the basic exclusion amount is $15 million per individual, up from $13.99 million in 2025, per the IRS in Revenue Procedure 2025-32 (IR-2025-103, October 2025). A married couple that elects portability can shield $30 million combined. Portability is the mechanism that lets a surviving spouse add the deceased spouse’s unused exemption to their own—but it is not automatic. The executor must file IRS Form 706 for the first spouse’s estate, even when no tax is owed, to preserve it.

Above the exemption, the federal estate tax applies a top marginal rate of 40% under IRC §2001(c), confirmed by the Tax Foundation’s 2025 estate tax analysis. The arithmetic is unforgiving but simple: taxable estate, minus available exemption, times 40%, equals tax owed. A single individual dying in 2026 with a $20 million taxable estate and no prior gifting owes 40% of the $5 million above the $15 million exemption—$2 million. The same individual at $15 million or below owes nothing.

What changed in July 2025 was not the rate or the formula. It was the exemption’s permanence. The TCJA sunset risk in 2026 had been the central planning anxiety for this tier since 2017: the doubled exemption was statutorily set to revert at the end of 2025 to its pre-2018 base of roughly $7 million per person, inflation-adjusted, per the IRS Estate and Gift Tax FAQs. OBBBA struck that reversion. The IRS confirms the new $15 million amount is indexed annually for inflation with no scheduled expiration.

Key figures at a glance

Sources: IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32 / IR-2025-103 (Oct. 2025); IRS Estate and Gift Tax FAQs (2026); IRC §2001(c). Counterfactual sunset figure per IRS FAQ description of pre-2018 reversion level.

The Finluxy Estate Tax Exposure Index

The proprietary metric here measures the gap between what an estate owes under current law and what it would owe under a reduced-exemption scenario. With the sunset eliminated, that second scenario is no longer a calendar certainty—it is a counterfactual stress test. It still matters for two reasons: OBBBA’s “permanence” is permanent only until Congress amends it, and any future administration could reintroduce a lower threshold. Modeling the lower-exemption case shows how much exposure the current law is actually suppressing.

The Finluxy Estate Tax Exposure Index below uses the confirmed 2026 exemption ($15M single / $30M married) for the current-law column, and the ~$7M single / ~$14M married counterfactual sunset level for the stress-test column. All figures assume the full estate is taxable—no charitable transfers, no marital deduction deferral, no prior lifetime gifting—so they represent a ceiling, not a planning-optimized result.

Methodology: (taxable estate − applicable exemption) × 40%. Current-law exemption: $15M single / $30M married (IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32). Counterfactual sunset exemption: ~$7M single / ~$14M married (IRS Estate and Gift Tax FAQs, pre-2018 reversion level). Figures assume fully taxable estate with no deductions or prior gifting; actual liability will be lower with planning.

The single-filer line at the bottom is the one that survives the law change. An unmarried individual with $20 million has real exposure today—$2 million—because a single person gets one $15 million exemption, not two. Marriage and a filed portability election are doing enormous work in this tier. The same $20 million estate owes nothing if the assets are split across two spousal exemptions and the first-death Form 706 is filed on time.

What the planning actually costs

Tax liability collapsed; planning cost did not. The fees below are what the $5M–$25M tier pays to put structures in place—and these are largely independent of whether any tax is currently owed, because the documents serve control, liquidity, creditor protection, and contingency-against-future-law functions beyond pure tax avoidance.

A foundational estate plan for this net worth band—revocable living trust, pour-over will, powers of attorney, healthcare directives—runs materially more than the flat-fee packages marketed to mass-market clients. Practitioner survey data from the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC) and Trusts & Estates practitioner reporting places comprehensive planning for high-net-worth households well above simple document preparation, scaling with complexity. The will versus trust cost comparison matters less here than the marginal cost of each additional structure layered on top.

Ranges synthesized from ACTEC practitioner survey data and Trusts & Estates journal practitioner reporting. Model-specific national fee data for 2026 was unavailable from a primary government source; figures are segment-average ranges and vary by jurisdiction, asset complexity, and firm. Range estimate, not point quotes.

Each irrevocable structure carries distinct mechanics and a distinct cost driver. The ILIT for life insurance removes a policy’s death benefit from the taxable estate—valuable specifically when a life insurance payout would push an otherwise-exempt estate above $15 million. Its ongoing cost is administrative: annual Crummey notices and trustee coordination. The GRAT mechanics and tax arbitrage work differently—the structure bets appreciation will outrun the IRS §7520 hurdle rate, transferring growth out of the estate, but it demands annual appraisals and is most useful when the exemption is the binding constraint, which for this tier it largely no longer is. The SLAT setup and ongoing fees run highest because the structure is the most complex: one spouse funds an irrevocable trust the other spouse can access, locking in today’s high exemption against a future reduction.

Annual gifting after the exemption jump

Lifetime gifting machinery looks different when the exemption is $30 million per couple rather than $7 million. The 2026 annual gift tax exclusion is $19,000 per donor per recipient, confirmed by the IRS in Revenue Procedure 2025-32—up from $18,000 in 2025. A married couple electing gift-splitting can transfer $38,000 per recipient per year without touching the lifetime exemption.

The arithmetic compounds across recipients and years. The annual gifting strategy math for a couple with three children and six grandchildren—nine recipients—allows $342,000 per year, entirely outside the lifetime exemption. Over a decade, that moves $3.42 million plus all subsequent appreciation out of the estate without a single dollar of exemption consumed.

Based on 2026 annual gift tax exclusion of $19,000 per donor ($38,000 per recipient with spousal gift-splitting), per IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32. Assumes the exclusion held flat for illustration; it is indexed and will rise with inflation. Excludes post-transfer appreciation, which compounds the effect.

For this tier, the strategic value of annual-exclusion gifting shifted. When the exemption was about to be halved, gifting was a race to use exemption before losing it. Now, with $30 million of combined shelter and no sunset, annual-exclusion gifting is less about tax avoidance and more about gradual wealth transfer, generational liquidity, and education funding—often paired with gifting appreciated assets to shift future growth and step-up considerations onto the next generation.

The state tax layer most federal coverage ignores

Here is what the data shows that the headline “exemption is permanent” coverage consistently overlooks: for a meaningful share of the $5M–$25M tier, the binding estate tax is no longer federal at all. It is state. Twelve states and the District of Columbia impose their own estate taxes, and five states levy inheritance taxes, per the Tax Foundation’s 2025 analysis—and several of those state exemptions sit far below the $15 million federal line.

The gap is dramatic. Tax Foundation data notes Massachusetts applies a state estate tax exemption far below the federal level, and Oregon’s threshold is similarly low. A $6 million estate that owes zero federal estate tax can owe meaningful state estate tax in those jurisdictions. A 2026 Creative Planning illustration walks through a $35 million Vermont estate that, after the state’s lower exemption and 16% state rate, faced roughly $4 million in Vermont estate tax on top of federal—with the state tax deductible against the federal taxable estate. Washington recently raised its top state estate tax rate to 35%. The estate versus inheritance tax by state distinction compounds this: an estate tax is paid by the estate before distribution; an inheritance tax is paid by the heir on what they receive, and Maryland imposes both.

For a household in this tier, that reframes the planning question. With federal exposure near zero for most married couples, the live questions are state-of-domicile, property held in multiple states, and whether relocating or restructuring titling moves assets out of a high-threshold state’s reach.

Methodology

What this tier should weigh at $150k+ income

For a high-income household building toward or sitting inside the $5M–$25M net worth band, the 2026 law removed the urgency but not the decisions. The federal estate tax is, for most married couples in this range, a solved problem at current law—$30 million of combined exemption covers the entire band. That changes where planning dollars should go. Spending $20,000 to lock in a SLAT against a sunset that no longer exists is a different proposition than it was in early 2025; the structure may still make sense for creditor protection or hedging future legislative reversal, but the tax-urgency rationale evaporated.

The decisions that remain are concrete. Single individuals above $15 million have real, current federal exposure and a genuine reason to model gifting and trust structures now. Married couples should confirm their plan actually captures both exemptions—an unfunded bypass arrangement or an unfiled portability election can waste $15 million of shelter. Households in or owning property in the twelve estate-tax states and DC face a live state liability that the federal change did nothing to address, and for them the planning question is domicile and titling, not federal exemption. And every household in this tier should treat “permanent” as conditional: OBBBA can be amended, and the Exposure Index column showing what a reduced exemption would cost is the measure of how much a future Congress could put back on the table. The prudent move is building flexibility—structures that help under a lower exemption without imposing dead-weight cost under the current one—which is a conversation for a licensed estate planning attorney and CPA who can model your specific asset mix, state exposure, and timeline against current law.