By Frank Lovaglio, RFC® · Senior Partner, Security Financial Management · CRD #1299700 Reviewed by Dave Allen, CFP® · CRD #1210763 · June 29, 2026 · Last reviewed June 29, 2026
Securities offered through Kestra Investment Services, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC (Kestra IS). Investment advisory services offered through Kestra Advisory Services, LLC (Kestra AS). Security Financial Management, Bluespring Wealth Partners, LLC, Kestra IS and Kestra AS are affiliated through common ownership by Kestra Holdings.
The $15M federal exemption is a coordination event, not a documentation event. Households below the threshold feel safe — and that is exactly when the documents stop agreeing.
Most estate plans built before July 2025 were designed for a different exemption number, a different sunset risk, and a different planning horizon. The number changed. The plan did not.
Monthly Snapshot · June 17, 2026
Data as of market close June 17, 2026 (post-FOMC) · CD-verified · cross-referenced minimum two sources per row · Snapshot LOCKED — never edited after publish.
#
Data Point
Value
Source
1
Fed Funds Rate (target range)
3.50%–3.75% (held 4th consecutive meeting · Jun 17 FOMC under Chair Kevin Warsh)
federalreserve.gov
2
10-Year U.S. Treasury yield
4.49% (close Jun 17)
FRED DGS10 + Yahoo Finance
3
CPI Headline (YoY · May print released Jun 10)
4.2%
bls.gov
4
Core CPI (YoY · ex food and energy)
2.9%
bls.gov
5
2026 federal estate exemption (post-OBBBA)
$15,000,000 per individual / $30,000,000 per married couple
IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32 + OBBBA Public Law
6
2026 lifetime gift exemption (unified)
$15,000,000 per individual
IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32
7
2026 annual gift exclusion per recipient
$19,000 (unchanged from 2025)
IRS
8
Top federal estate / gift tax rate
40%
IRC §2001
9
S&P 500 close (Jun 16, 2026)
7,511.35
S&P Global + Yahoo Finance
10
U.S. federal debt as % of GDP (Q1 2026)
100.2% ($31.27T debt / $31.22T GDP)
CRFB + Treasury Fiscal Data
Monthly Theme Bridge
The OBBBA permanently set the federal estate and gift exemption at $15M per individual beginning January 1, 2026 — and removed the sunset that was scheduled under TCJA. For households with $1M–$3M in net worth, the news reads like a reprieve; the planning reality is that the coordination layer underneath their existing documents now has to be re-checked against a different math, not against a different number of zeros.
The Current Environment
June 2026 is the first mid-year mark inside the OBBBA exemption regime, and the FOMC’s June 17 decision to hold the federal funds target range at 3.50%–3.75% for a fourth consecutive meeting confirms a higher-for-longer macro backdrop that frames how this year’s coordination work gets done. Three structural features of the current environment matter for households inside the $1M–$3M band — the households who quietly assume “I’m below the threshold” is the same as “I’m done.”
First — the $15M exemption is a legislative input, not a market input.
The exemption was made permanent and indexed to inflation beginning 2027 (2025 base year). That is a different planning posture than 2024 or early 2025, when families were drafting trust language specifically to capture the TCJA window before sunset. Plans drafted under that pressure often included testamentary trust mechanics, disclaimer trusts, or aggressive lifetime gifting strategies designed for an exemption number that no longer applies. Those mechanics are not always wrong — but they are no longer load-bearing for the reason they were originally drafted. A coordination audit is the work of asking whether the documents still point at the outcome the household actually wants now that the math has changed.
Second — the planning emphasis has shifted from estate tax to income tax.
With most households now well below the $15M threshold, the most consequential tax planning tool for $1M–$3M families is no longer the estate tax exemption itself. It is the step-up in basis at death under Internal Revenue Code Section 1014, which OBBBA left unchanged. Assets that pass through an estate receive a fair-market-value basis at the date of death — eliminating embedded capital gain for the heir. That single provision is now doing more long-run tax work for most clients than the exemption is. The implication: irrevocable trust structures that were designed to remove assets from the estate (and thereby give up the step-up) need to be re-examined. If the original reason was estate-tax avoidance under a $5M–$12M exemption regime, and the new regime is $15M permanent, the trust may now be optimizing for a tax that the household will not pay — while costing the step-up that the household’s heirs would have received for free.
Third — sub-exemption households still face survivor filing status compression, and portability is not automatic.
The $15M exemption is per individual, not per couple. The $30M figure for married couples requires the surviving spouse to claim the deceased spouse’s unused exemption (DSUE) — and that claim is made by filing a Form 706 federal estate tax return, even when no tax is due. Households at $1M–$3M who assume “we’re nowhere near $15M, we don’t need to file anything” can inadvertently forfeit the portability election. That forfeiture rarely matters at $1M–$3M today — but it can matter substantially if the surviving spouse’s wealth grows over the next 15–25 years through retained earnings, equity compounding, or inherited assets from a third party. Portability preserves optionality. Forfeiting it removes a door the surviving spouse may want to walk through later.
Fourth — Florida residency does not insulate non-Florida beneficiaries.
Florida has no state estate tax and no state inheritance tax — that protection is constitutional. It applies to the Florida-resident decedent. It does not extend to beneficiaries who reside in states that still impose an inheritance tax on residents who inherit from out-of-state decedents. As of 2026 there are five such states: Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. A Florida household with adult children living in any of those five states needs the coordination layer to account for the beneficiary’s state — not just the decedent’s state — when sizing assets, choosing between probate vs. trust transfer, and timing lifetime gifts vs. testamentary transfers.
“Estate plans don’t fail from complexity. They fail from lack of coordination.”
What This Means For Planning This Month
The temptation in a higher-exemption regime is to do nothing — to read the headline number, conclude the household is comfortably below it, and skip the audit. That is the same belief D1 named as the Complexity Illusion: estate planning only matters when assets get complex enough. The OBBBA change is the opposite signal. The math got easier for most households. The coordination work — the year-by-year audit of whether the will, the beneficiary forms, the trust language, the power of attorney, and the tax structure still point at the same outcome — is unchanged. June is the month to confirm the documents still agree before the year-end gifting and tax-decision windows close.
The Coordination Sequence — Five Steps, Year by Year
Five-step sequence — verbatim across the Estate Planning pillar (D1, D2, D3, D4, D5).
Lock the basic documents in one drafting window — will, durable power of attorney, healthcare power of attorney, living will.
Align every beneficiary designation against the will in writing.
Coordinate tax decisions — Roth conversions, RMD timing, basis step-up planning — year by year before complexity arrives.
Add the trust only after the coordination is established.
Re-audit every twelve to eighteen months — confirm all documents still point at the same outcome.
“Estate plans don’t fail from complexity. They fail from lack of coordination.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Does OBBBA’s $15M exemption mean households under $3M can skip estate planning?
No. The exemption sets the threshold above which federal estate tax applies — it does not change whether documents still coordinate. A will from 2014 that names guardians who are now adults, beneficiary forms that point to a rolled-over 401(k) that no longer exists, and a trust that references a sibling who has passed are all coordination failures, not exemption failures. Those failures cost families regardless of whether the estate ever owes federal tax. The $15M threshold removes the federal estate tax exposure for nearly all $1M–$3M households; it does not remove the work of confirming the documents still agree.
What changes for a married couple under OBBBA — portability vs. each-spouse exemption?
The $15M exemption is per individual. A married couple’s combined $30M figure is only available if the surviving spouse files Form 706 within 5 years of the first spouse’s death to claim the deceased spouse’s unused exemption (DSUE). The 706 must be filed even if no tax is owed. For $1M–$3M households, the portability claim may feel unnecessary today — but it preserves the second spouse’s optionality if their wealth grows materially over the following 15–25 years. The coordination layer is whether the surviving spouse’s executor knows the election exists.
How does the step-up in basis interact with the new exemption?
OBBBA left IRC §1014 unchanged. Assets held until death receive a fair-market-value basis for the heir, eliminating embedded capital gain. Assets gifted during lifetime carry the donor’s original basis. For $1M–$3M households now well below the $15M exemption, holding appreciated assets until death is generally the more tax-efficient path for the heir — because there is no estate tax exposure to offset, and there is a meaningful capital-gains benefit at death. Plans built before OBBBA that prioritized lifetime gifting to “use up” the exemption before sunset deserve a second look in this regime.
Does a Florida resident need to worry about non-Florida beneficiaries under OBBBA?
Yes — when the beneficiary lives in a state that still imposes an inheritance tax on residents inheriting from out-of-state decedents. As of 2026, those states are Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The Florida-resident decedent owes no Florida estate or inheritance tax (the Florida Constitution prohibits both). But the beneficiary in one of the five states above may owe state inheritance tax on assets received. The coordination layer is whether the plan accounts for the beneficiary’s state at the time of inheritance — not just the decedent’s state at the time of drafting.
Read this month’s Brief: June 2026 — Estate & Legacy Planning (publishes end of month — placeholder link until live)
Next month — July 2026 — we move to the tax decisions that sit on top of estate coordination: Roth conversion timing, RMD windows, and the basis step-up math that determines how much of the estate actually survives the transfer.
Schedule with Security Financial Management
A 15-minute call confirms whether your plan needs an alignment audit, a refresh of one or two specific documents, or whether the five still point the same direction. Coordinating these five documents is the foundation. The tax decisions that sit on top are the layer we turn to next.
Frank Lovaglio, RFC® · Senior Partner, Security Financial Management. Frank has guided multigenerational families through coordinated retirement and estate planning since 1989. Named to AdvisorHub’s 2025 Advisors to Watch, Over $1B. 36 years of industry experience, zero disclosures. Dave Ramsey SmartVestor Pro.
Disclosures
The information presented is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or investment advice. Security Financial Management, Inc. is a registered investment advisor under Kestra Advisory Services, LLC. Estate planning strategies should be coordinated with qualified legal counsel and tax professionals familiar with your specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Securities offered through Kestra Investment Services, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC (Kestra IS). Investment advisory services offered through Kestra Advisory Services, LLC (Kestra AS). Security Financial Management, Bluespring Wealth Partners, LLC, Kestra IS and Kestra AS are affiliated through common ownership by Kestra Holdings.
OBBBA $15M Estate Exemption 2026 — Coordination Commentary
By Frank Lovaglio, RFC® · Senior Partner, Security Financial Management · CRD #1299700
Reviewed by Dave Allen, CFP® · CRD #1210763 · June 29, 2026 · Last reviewed June 29, 2026
Securities offered through Kestra Investment Services, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC (Kestra IS). Investment advisory services offered through Kestra Advisory Services, LLC (Kestra AS). Security Financial Management, Bluespring Wealth Partners, LLC, Kestra IS and Kestra AS are affiliated through common ownership by Kestra Holdings.
The $15M federal exemption is a coordination event, not a documentation event. Households below the threshold feel safe — and that is exactly when the documents stop agreeing.
Most estate plans built before July 2025 were designed for a different exemption number, a different sunset risk, and a different planning horizon. The number changed. The plan did not.
Monthly Snapshot · June 17, 2026
Data as of market close June 17, 2026 (post-FOMC) · CD-verified · cross-referenced minimum two sources per row · Snapshot LOCKED — never edited after publish.
Monthly Theme Bridge
The OBBBA permanently set the federal estate and gift exemption at $15M per individual beginning January 1, 2026 — and removed the sunset that was scheduled under TCJA. For households with $1M–$3M in net worth, the news reads like a reprieve; the planning reality is that the coordination layer underneath their existing documents now has to be re-checked against a different math, not against a different number of zeros.
The Current Environment
June 2026 is the first mid-year mark inside the OBBBA exemption regime, and the FOMC’s June 17 decision to hold the federal funds target range at 3.50%–3.75% for a fourth consecutive meeting confirms a higher-for-longer macro backdrop that frames how this year’s coordination work gets done. Three structural features of the current environment matter for households inside the $1M–$3M band — the households who quietly assume “I’m below the threshold” is the same as “I’m done.”
First — the $15M exemption is a legislative input, not a market input.
The exemption was made permanent and indexed to inflation beginning 2027 (2025 base year). That is a different planning posture than 2024 or early 2025, when families were drafting trust language specifically to capture the TCJA window before sunset. Plans drafted under that pressure often included testamentary trust mechanics, disclaimer trusts, or aggressive lifetime gifting strategies designed for an exemption number that no longer applies. Those mechanics are not always wrong — but they are no longer load-bearing for the reason they were originally drafted. A coordination audit is the work of asking whether the documents still point at the outcome the household actually wants now that the math has changed.
Second — the planning emphasis has shifted from estate tax to income tax.
With most households now well below the $15M threshold, the most consequential tax planning tool for $1M–$3M families is no longer the estate tax exemption itself. It is the step-up in basis at death under Internal Revenue Code Section 1014, which OBBBA left unchanged. Assets that pass through an estate receive a fair-market-value basis at the date of death — eliminating embedded capital gain for the heir. That single provision is now doing more long-run tax work for most clients than the exemption is. The implication: irrevocable trust structures that were designed to remove assets from the estate (and thereby give up the step-up) need to be re-examined. If the original reason was estate-tax avoidance under a $5M–$12M exemption regime, and the new regime is $15M permanent, the trust may now be optimizing for a tax that the household will not pay — while costing the step-up that the household’s heirs would have received for free.
Third — sub-exemption households still face survivor filing status compression, and portability is not automatic.
The $15M exemption is per individual, not per couple. The $30M figure for married couples requires the surviving spouse to claim the deceased spouse’s unused exemption (DSUE) — and that claim is made by filing a Form 706 federal estate tax return, even when no tax is due. Households at $1M–$3M who assume “we’re nowhere near $15M, we don’t need to file anything” can inadvertently forfeit the portability election. That forfeiture rarely matters at $1M–$3M today — but it can matter substantially if the surviving spouse’s wealth grows over the next 15–25 years through retained earnings, equity compounding, or inherited assets from a third party. Portability preserves optionality. Forfeiting it removes a door the surviving spouse may want to walk through later.
Fourth — Florida residency does not insulate non-Florida beneficiaries.
Florida has no state estate tax and no state inheritance tax — that protection is constitutional. It applies to the Florida-resident decedent. It does not extend to beneficiaries who reside in states that still impose an inheritance tax on residents who inherit from out-of-state decedents. As of 2026 there are five such states: Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. A Florida household with adult children living in any of those five states needs the coordination layer to account for the beneficiary’s state — not just the decedent’s state — when sizing assets, choosing between probate vs. trust transfer, and timing lifetime gifts vs. testamentary transfers.
“Estate plans don’t fail from complexity. They fail from lack of coordination.”
What This Means For Planning This Month
The temptation in a higher-exemption regime is to do nothing — to read the headline number, conclude the household is comfortably below it, and skip the audit. That is the same belief D1 named as the Complexity Illusion: estate planning only matters when assets get complex enough. The OBBBA change is the opposite signal. The math got easier for most households. The coordination work — the year-by-year audit of whether the will, the beneficiary forms, the trust language, the power of attorney, and the tax structure still point at the same outcome — is unchanged. June is the month to confirm the documents still agree before the year-end gifting and tax-decision windows close.
The Coordination Sequence — Five Steps, Year by Year
Five-step sequence — verbatim across the Estate Planning pillar (D1, D2, D3, D4, D5).
“Estate plans don’t fail from complexity. They fail from lack of coordination.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Does OBBBA’s $15M exemption mean households under $3M can skip estate planning?
No. The exemption sets the threshold above which federal estate tax applies — it does not change whether documents still coordinate. A will from 2014 that names guardians who are now adults, beneficiary forms that point to a rolled-over 401(k) that no longer exists, and a trust that references a sibling who has passed are all coordination failures, not exemption failures. Those failures cost families regardless of whether the estate ever owes federal tax. The $15M threshold removes the federal estate tax exposure for nearly all $1M–$3M households; it does not remove the work of confirming the documents still agree.
What changes for a married couple under OBBBA — portability vs. each-spouse exemption?
The $15M exemption is per individual. A married couple’s combined $30M figure is only available if the surviving spouse files Form 706 within 5 years of the first spouse’s death to claim the deceased spouse’s unused exemption (DSUE). The 706 must be filed even if no tax is owed. For $1M–$3M households, the portability claim may feel unnecessary today — but it preserves the second spouse’s optionality if their wealth grows materially over the following 15–25 years. The coordination layer is whether the surviving spouse’s executor knows the election exists.
How does the step-up in basis interact with the new exemption?
OBBBA left IRC §1014 unchanged. Assets held until death receive a fair-market-value basis for the heir, eliminating embedded capital gain. Assets gifted during lifetime carry the donor’s original basis. For $1M–$3M households now well below the $15M exemption, holding appreciated assets until death is generally the more tax-efficient path for the heir — because there is no estate tax exposure to offset, and there is a meaningful capital-gains benefit at death. Plans built before OBBBA that prioritized lifetime gifting to “use up” the exemption before sunset deserve a second look in this regime.
Does a Florida resident need to worry about non-Florida beneficiaries under OBBBA?
Yes — when the beneficiary lives in a state that still imposes an inheritance tax on residents inheriting from out-of-state decedents. As of 2026, those states are Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The Florida-resident decedent owes no Florida estate or inheritance tax (the Florida Constitution prohibits both). But the beneficiary in one of the five states above may owe state inheritance tax on assets received. The coordination layer is whether the plan accounts for the beneficiary’s state at the time of inheritance — not just the decedent’s state at the time of drafting.
Continue with the Estate & Legacy Planning Center
Next month — July 2026 — we move to the tax decisions that sit on top of estate coordination: Roth conversion timing, RMD windows, and the basis step-up math that determines how much of the estate actually survives the transfer.
Schedule with Security Financial Management
A 15-minute call confirms whether your plan needs an alignment audit, a refresh of one or two specific documents, or whether the five still point the same direction. Coordinating these five documents is the foundation. The tax decisions that sit on top are the layer we turn to next.
About the Author
Frank Lovaglio, RFC® · Senior Partner, Security Financial Management. Frank has guided multigenerational families through coordinated retirement and estate planning since 1989. Named to AdvisorHub’s 2025 Advisors to Watch, Over $1B. 36 years of industry experience, zero disclosures. Dave Ramsey SmartVestor Pro.
Disclosures
The information presented is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or investment advice. Security Financial Management, Inc. is a registered investment advisor under Kestra Advisory Services, LLC. Estate planning strategies should be coordinated with qualified legal counsel and tax professionals familiar with your specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Securities offered through Kestra Investment Services, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC (Kestra IS). Investment advisory services offered through Kestra Advisory Services, LLC (Kestra AS). Security Financial Management, Bluespring Wealth Partners, LLC, Kestra IS and Kestra AS are affiliated through common ownership by Kestra Holdings.