Transcript
When one spouse and a married couple is not a U.S. citizen, it does have an impact on the planning that couple will be doing together.
The reason is is that there is a tax benefit that the government gives a married couple, but only when the surviving spouse is a U.S. citizen. If the surviving spouse is not a US citizen, that tax benefit is not available.
Now there is a pretty straightforward way to plan for this to make sure the estate tax gets deferred until the death of the surviving spouse. But you’ve got to do the right planning around it and you want to make sure that you’re working with a law firm like ours.
We work with non-us citizens on a regular basis who know how to do this planning. But the you can plan for this. You just got to know that there’s some extra things that have to go in to the planning when there’s a non-us citizen spouse.
