My elderly mother has advanced Alzheimer's and we're preparing her estate in California.

She has gifted significant amounts to her children over the years but her current assets will still put her over the lifetime gift exemption of $13.6m. We're gifting $17k per year to every descendant but that still doesn't make a large dent in her estate.

What should I be looking into for estate preservation beyond the lifetime gift exemption? From what I've read... contributions to a trust will be considered a gift and we're already near or above that $13m limit (counting the contribution) so we'll be hitting the 40% when we contribute to the trust.

Perhaps there's a special type I should look into that can bypass the contribution = gift problem?

Summary:

lifetime gifts so far: $6m

estate (stock portfolio): $9m

how do we shield the ~$3m from estate taxes? That number keeps growing each year as she has negligible expenses.

Addendum: Started reading the responses and thought I should mention that... yes of course we're hiring an estate planner. I just don't know what to say to him/her exactly. Don't want to set up a meeting and have them say ... "well... we can't do anything about that..." 3 mins into the meeting. Got a nice hint/thread about looking into a deceased spouse with unused exemptions.... that could be a winner.