Lessons for the Rest of Us From an Actor's Estate Plan / Some experts have criticized the late James Gandolfini's estate plan for exposing much of his legacy to taxes. Are they right?

Kelly Greene for the Wall St. Journal writes: Tony Soprano, the mafia boss played so memorably by James Gandolfini, presumably knew how to dodge taxes.

But after the actor died in June at age 51, some lawyers took his estate plan to task for needlessly exposing his fortune—estimated at $70 million—to estate taxes instead of shielding it better by making more extensive use of trusts.

of the trust," says Mr. Hood. The trust protector could be given the power to replace the trustee or simply to oversee the trustee's actions, he says.

• Leaving children a home together.
Mr. Gandolfini's will leaves his Italian estate to his two children together, and says that his hope was that they would hold on to it, though they are allowed to sell it after they both turn 25 years old.
To give that dream any sort of chance, there needs to be a cash pot set aside with money to maintain it, experts say.

Ms. Bouchard encountered a similar situation in which a married couple wanted to leave a mountain property, where the family took ski trips, to four different children: two from their own marriage and two from the husband's previous marriage.
"Are all four supposed to pay equally to maintain it, even though they're in very different stages of their lives? If you're not having these conversations up front, it creates these emotional land mines," she says.

In addition to convening a family meeting to discuss such plans, parents wanting to leave vacation homes should set up a separate account to fund their continuing expenses. They can make the trust holding the house the beneficiary of that account, says Bruce Steiner, an estate-planning lawyer at Kleinberg Kaplan Wolff & Cohen in New York.

• Leaving young adults a lot of money outright.
Mr. Gandolfini's infant daughter gets control of her share of his residual estate when she turns 21 years old.

"That's really too young to get a bunch of money," Mr. Steiner says. "She's the daughter of a celebrity, and people know who she is. A trust would protect against the fact that 21-year-olds are kind of vulnerable."

Even if she were mature beyond her years, "she could run over somebody and get sued. She could get divorced. She could go to medical school and not want the money in her own name, because she wants to protect it" against malpractice claims, he says.

One option for families who want to leave young children money without being beholden to their mothers and aunts throughout their lives: making the child a trustee at one age, and then giving the child control at a later point, Mr. Steiner says.