Was the Repeal of the Estate Tax simply bad Film Noir?
In our household, I take pride in my ability to predict movie plots. Or so I think. I can only recall three movies where I was caught by surprise: “The Sixth Sense”, “The Crying Game”, and “Body Heat”. Now “Body Heat”, Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 film noir, starring Kathleen Turner, as the protagonist going after her husband’s inheritance, and William Hurt, as an unsuspecting lawyer, was interesting in that at least I had a head start in guessing the plot which revolved around the lawyer’s failure to understand the Rule Against Perpetuities, an estate planner’s nightmare. (See Estate Planning and Body Heat, by Michael Asimow of UCLA Law School) The so-called “repeal of the estate tax”, and its intricacies, were it a film, would have to be added to this list. I am still trying to sort out the plots and subplots. This I know…the estate tax was repealed. To be sure, its demise will only last one year, 2010. In the year 2011, the estate tax will simply spring back to life unless Congress and
