text:  trusts or what I like to call estate planning 101 which is really the foundation of estate planning pretty much can eliminate your estate tax and it's amazing because if you don't do anything and you're a married couple and you just I leave everything to my spouse and I'm worth 20 million well the surviving spouse will be worth 20 million and you could have potentially wasted your 14 million dollar exemption say you didn't do planning and you didn't elect portability and it's very possible when you don't plan none of that happens