In estate planning, one of the most popular uses for all trusts — and certainly for a marriage-oriented trust — is to buy time on paying any applicable estate taxes until both spouses in a marriage have died, or to skip over your spouse for purposes of transferring property but still give your spouse the right to income from a trust.

A marital deduction trust allows you to put property in trust with your spouse as the beneficiary. Upon your death, your spouse has the right to use the property in the trust. No matter how valuable the property in the trust is even if it exceeds that year's federal estate tax exemption amount, your spouse won't owe any federal estate taxes.

Later, upon your spouse's death, the leftover amount, if any, transfers to the beneficiaries that your spouse determines.