Masters in Business Sep 25, 2026 1h 11m · 50m saved
With Adam Frank, Managing Director and Head of Wealth Planning and Advice at J.P. Morgan Wealth Management
A married couple can pass about $30 million free of federal estate tax. Oregon taxes estates above $1 million, and New York's threshold is $7.35 million, with no transfer of an unused exemption between spouses.
The federal headline has persuaded most families they have no estate-tax exposure at all. Adam Frank said the states are where ordinary wealthy families get caught, and that re-titling a few accounts can save them a million dollars.
"So there are a lot of families who don't consider themselves super wealthy — they're not flying private, they're not renting helicopters, they don't have multiple homes in different countries — but they might be subject to that tax."
Adam Frank, Managing Director and Head of Wealth Planning and Advice at J.P. Morgan Wealth Management, on Masters in Business. A former trusts-and-estates lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell and Schulte Roth & Zabel, he has run the same planning team since 2001, first at Bear Stearns, where he was inside the building the weekend the firm was sold to JPMorgan.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 71 minutes of audio, 21 minutes of reading.
Here are the 16 lessons that matter.
Key Takeaways
State estate taxes reach families far below the $30M federal exemption
New York's threshold is $7.35M and cannot pass to a surviving spouse
Bear Stearns' fee-based revenue rose from about 3% to 37% of private-client revenue between 2001 and 2006
Most estate plans fail on people, not documents, Frank said
Clients freed from beating the S&P can focus on what the money is for
A tax saving can justify an advisory fee that relative performance cannot
Qualified small business stock can exempt up to $10M of gains, and many accountants never mention it
The first stage of the great wealth transfer is between spouses, not to children
Advisors who do not know a client's children lose the money when the parents die
Families nervous about large gifts can start with annual exclusion gifts of $19,000 per recipient
Planning has to fit the tax code in force, with flexibility built in and a review every 3–5 years
1. From Law Clerk to Estates
The host introduced Frank's group as one that "manages about $1.4 trillion," inside a combined J.P. Morgan asset and wealth management business of over $7 trillion. He said Frank earned a psychology degree at the University of Pennsylvania and a law degree at Yale. Frank said the plan was always law or medicine, because his mother told him so.
He clerked for Judge Jacob Mishler
Frank clerked for Judge Jacob Mishler in the Eastern District of New York. As a senior judge, Mishler chose mostly civil cases, and Frank watched him object from the bench on behalf of parties whose lawyers were not quick enough. Each year Mishler sat for four months in the Southern District of Florida in Miami, and his two clerks went with him. That was the winter of 1993, when New York had 7 or 8 ice storms and Frank's wife could not fly down to visit.
"And I felt a little bit guilty, but not that much." — Adam Frank
A trusts-and-estates class he took for the schedule
In his third year of law school he took a trusts-and-estates course because it met Tuesdays and Thursdays and left his Fridays free. The case book caught him.
"And it was all of the families fighting over who mom loved best, using their money or their business or their restaurant as a proxy for that." — Adam Frank
He said the field sat where property law met the psychology he had studied, and it was more human than corporate or litigation work. At Sullivan & Cromwell he worked on estate litigation involving a woman who learned about a year and a half before her mother died that she was adopted; she and her son moved in, took over and stole money. He saw the case through to a successful finish. The practice also covered heirs, business owners and family compounds, and once he sued a dry cleaner for ironing the pleats out of a couture dress.
"It was a big soap opera." — Adam Frank
