practical guides

Great for law students taking an estate planning course or an estate and gift tax course. Also good for people wanting to learn about estate planning in general. I would recommend this book.

At first I was hesitant about doing something so important as planning my estate without a lawyer but this book really changed my mind. It is comprehensive, well organized and very easy to use. Plan Your Estate took me through every step of the process, even the more complicated parts such as providing for both my child from my first marriage and my current family. This book includes sample estate plans so you can get a better idea of what you want to do and even includes the tricky state-by-state rules.
I bought both this book and Estate Planning for Dummies but ended up only using this one. I'm so happy about how much money I saved in legal fees by doing it myself that I've been recommending it to everyone!

If you expect to have a $1,000,000+ estate and want to understand your tax saving options, this book is excellent. It's readable, usually clear, well organized & well indexed. It progresses into many advanced topics such as QTIP trusts, GSTT trusts, GRATs, GRUTs, GRITs, etc. and explains them in good detail, with examples. Includes some very useful state-by-state info.

You'll work much better with your lawyer if you read this book first.

I read a library copy, but then bought my own.

This book works well with Condon's "Beyond the Grave", which is much weaker on the nuts and bolts of estate tax planning but much better at getting you to think through the human (family conflict) side.