Perhaps a more fruitful way to minimize taxes is using gifts vs leaving all of it in the estate. For example, D is a PhD candidate so her income is below capital gains levels. I gift each kid the same amount each January, but she gets hers in highly appreciated stock. She can then sell those with no cap gains to either her or me. She then uses part of the proceeds to max out a Roth IRA (another tax win). S is in finance, so he gets cash, often raised from loss investments so that it created capital losses for me to use.
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