FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

By Mark S. Poochigian, Esq.*

As promised two issues ago, this Volume 21, Issue 3, of the Quarterly is a symposium issue focusing especially on federal and California tax issues of interest to California trusts and estates attorneys. As has typically been the case with symposium issues, this issue was organized by one of the 17 subcommittees of the Executive Committee of the Trusts and Estates Section ("TEXCOM"). For the second time in less than three years, the Tax subcommittee—this year’s members being Erin Prouty (Chair), Jeff Carchidi, Michael Kerner, Julie Kwon, John Prokey, and Tom Shaver—took the laboring oar in terms of planning, recruiting, and editing a symposium issue for the Quarterly. I am especially grateful to the Tax subcommittee’s chair, Erin Prouty, who enthusiastically took primary responsibility for the issue, personally recruited the authors for three of the articles, and served as the Symposium Managing Editor. Thank you, Erin and the members of the Tax subcommittee, for all of your hard work that culminated in this issue. I am also grateful to The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel for its courtesy in allowing the Quarterly to publish the article entitled, ‘California Income Taxation of Trusts and Estates," which first appeared in the ACTEC Law Journal. And, sincere thanks to all of the authors whose articles appear in this issue, whose contributions are more fully and appropriately acknowledged in the ‘From the Symposium Managing Editor" column that follows this one.

This being my final "From the Editor-in-Chief column, I will devote it largely to thanking the volunteer Quarterly staff members who worked so hard this year to publish six issues of this publication, and TEXCOM for its support of the Quarterly. In 2013, TEXCOM studied the organizational structure of the Quarterly and observed a need to devote more resources to the Quarterly, both in terms of the number of TEXCOM members assigned to the Quarterly, and by added support for the publication through article writing and solicitation by TEXCOM members. Only because of TEXCOM’s strong support for the Quarterly were six issues produced in about a year’s time, accomplishing one of TEXCOM’s initiatives to provide added benefits to Section members.

I hope you will join me in thanking the members of this year’s Quarterly staff for their considerable efforts. TEXCOM Chair Jeremy Crickard and Vice-Chair Patrick Kohlmann were both very supportive of the Quarterly staff’s work. Operations Editor Carolyn West did a wonderful job of working with the Quarterly‘s advertisers, and even served as an Assistant Editor for a couple of issues. Ellen McKissock and Nancy Reimann very capably and cheerfully performed their Managing Editor duties; knowing the effort that Ellen, Nancy and Carolyn devoted to their editorial work gave me tremendous peace of mind as a ‘downstream" editor.