Julie Garber reports that Alex G. Spanos has changed his mind about selling some of his interest in the San Diego Charges in order to do some estate tax planning.   Selling assets isn't all that common as an estate planning technique, but he could have planned to create liquidity in order to pay the tax later or purchase some insurance products to pay the tax.

 However, I agree with Julie that there has to be more to his change of heart than the recently enacted and potentially short-lived $5 million exemption.  His estate appears to be taxable even with that exemption and he can't count on that exemption sticking around after the tax cuts expire.

 If he plans on making large gifts this year or next in order to take advantage of the $5M exemption I hope he understands that legal experts are divided as to whether a gift made now will be "grandfathered in" if the exemption goes down after 2012 ends.  It's more complicated than grandfathering in, because gifts have always been added back in to the estate tax calculation and then the exemption is applied.  So what if the gifts were made when the exemption is high and you die when the exemption is low?  No one is really sure.