The current federal estate tax exemption is $15 million per individual in 2026. At the end of this year, that number is scheduled to drop — roughly in half — when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions expire. If your estate, or the estate of a parent or spouse you’re helping plan for, is anywhere near that range, the window to act is open right now. It will not stay open indefinitely.
Oklahoma repealed its own estate and inheritance tax years ago. But the federal exemption is a different matter, and the upcoming change is real.
What the Exemption Means in Practice
Amounts above the exemption threshold are taxed at up to 40%. That’s the number people usually don’t know until it’s too late to do anything about it.
For married couples, both spouses carry their own exemption, and the unused portion of the first spouse’s exemption can be transferred to the survivor — a provision called portability. To claim it, the estate of the first spouse to die must file a federal estate tax return and make a portability election, even if no tax is owed. A lot of families skip this step because no tax was due and no one told them it mattered. Then the second spouse dies, the exemption is half what it should have been, and the bill arrives.
Done correctly, a married couple can currently shelter up to $30 million. When the exemption drops at year end, that combined number drops with it.
Oklahoma Has Tools That Other States Don’t
Transfer-on-Death Deed lets you pass real property directly to a named beneficiary at death, without going through probate. Oklahoma has allowed this since 2009. You keep full control of the property while you’re alive — the deed only activates at death, and you can revoke it if circumstances change. Most people with real estate in Oklahoma should at least know this option exists. Many don’t.
Irrevocable trusts are the heavier instrument for larger estates with real federal tax exposure. Assets moved into an irrevocable trust are generally removed from your taxable estate. You give up control over those assets in exchange. How that tradeoff looks for your situation — what goes in, what stays out, who serves as trustee, how distributions work — is not something to sort out from a form online.
Oklahoma’s elective share law is the one that surprises people in the planning stage. A surviving spouse has the right to claim a portion of the estate regardless of what a will says. Plans that don’t build this in can produce distributions no one intended.
Gifting Before the Exemption Drops
You can give up to $19,000 per recipient per year in 2026 without triggering gift tax reporting. Larger gifts count against your lifetime exemption. If the exemption is going to drop, gifts made this year lock in the higher number.
That window closes when the calendar does. Not when Congress gets around to it. Not when the IRS issues guidance. December 31.
That said, giving assets away has consequences that go beyond the tax math. Loss of control is the obvious one. The less obvious one is Medicaid: transferring assets within five years of applying for long-term care coverage can disqualify you or trigger a penalty period. People who accelerate gifting without thinking through the long-term care scenario sometimes solve one problem and create a worse one. Getting the sequencing right is the whole game.
Why Now Is the Right Time to Review Your Plan
Estate plans are not static documents. Tax law changes. Families change. A plan drafted five years ago almost certainly doesn’t account for where exemption levels are now, where they’re going, or how your asset picture has shifted.
No plan at all is the simpler problem. Oklahoma’s intestate succession laws will make the decisions you didn’t. They follow a fixed formula. That formula doesn’t know what you wanted.
At Brune Law Firm, we handle wills, estates, and trusts for Tulsa-area families and business owners. Call us at (918) 599-8600. If the federal exemption changes are something you need to plan around, the sooner we look at your situation, the more options you have.