The 2010 federal estate tax repeal has been nine years in the making, yet we can honestly say that no one saw it coming. Commentators and professionals universally predicted that Congress would take action in 2009 to prevent the repeal in 2010, with general prognostications that the federal estate tax exemption would land somewhere between $3,500,000 and $5,000,000. Congress did not act, and we now find ourselves in a system created by what some commentators are calling "congressional malpractice" and what the Senate Finance Committee Chairman describes as "massive, massive confusion." Here is the bottom line of how the estate tax landscape has changed and what to look out for over the next 12 months.