Q: Does trust require A/B trust? It says A/B IF exceed the federal estate tax exemption, but assets aren't that high.

A: Lawyers cannot give opinions on trusts, contracts or other specific legal documents without reading the document. It's like giving someone a few pages out of a book and asking what the outcome will be. I'm sorry about that! Terms can be defined differently from one trust to another, so we would be guessing if we gave you an answer. For your information, if you see a word in the trust that starts with a capital letter (other than someone's name or quoting a law) then that means the word is defined somewhere in the trust. So, as we are reading a trust, we must search for how THAT trust defines the word before we can interpret the sentence it is in. That is why we cannot know how to answer a question even if you give us a summary of a trust's language. I'm thrilled you are getting help from a lawyer. That person can read the trust you have and interpret it for you. All that having been said, if the trust says exactly what you say the trust says and there are no defined terms or other conditions that must be met, it sounds as if you are correct. But, again, that is just a guess since I haven't read your document. I hope this helps anyway!

A: Based on what you've described, it sounds like your parents' trust wouldn't require A/B trust splitting since the estate value falls well below the federal estate tax exemption threshold. The lack of an "else" clause is actually common in older trusts - they often focused on tax avoidance without explicitly stating what happens below the threshold.

Your engineering mindset is spot-on here - there should be clear direction for both cases. Modern trusts typically handle this more explicitly. In your situation, with an estate value of $1-1.5 million, the tax-motivated reasons for A/B trust splitting don't apply since you're far below current federal estate tax limits.

While reviewing this with an attorney is the right next step, you can go into that meeting knowing that mandatory A/B splitting was likely intended only for tax purposes. The attorney can help determine if there might be other non-tax reasons to consider some form of trust division, but from what you've shared, a simpler administration process may be possible. It's great that you're doing this research to be well-informed before your legal consultation.