I did a quick check at vanguard.com, and mutual funds that deal in intermediate-term bonds are yielding in the 6.5% to 7.5% range. So whoever gets guardianship of your kids would be able to feed, house, and educate them from an income stream of over $130K per year (presumably that income would be subject to capital gains tax).

I am sure that your untimely death would cause great suffering for your children, but I really don’t see them suffering in a financial sense.

I'm opposed to an aggressive estate tax too, but I can't believe those numbers; that comes out to more than $50k per year per child.

That makes sense.

You know what doesn't make sense, though? Complaining about a "death tax" on the one hand while complaining about the budget deficit at the same time, yet maintaining that you're the political party of hard work, bootstrapping, blah blah. If you care about the latter two, don't spend your time going to the mat for Paris Hilton. If you consult some charts about income distribution in this country, you can conclude that the vaaaaaaaaast majority of the revenue collected under this tax comes from very large estates where the children would be set for life with 10% of it, and they're doing very very well with 3.5Mil + 45% of the rest.

Exceptional cases may be worthy of exceptions under the law, but that doesn't change whether the law makes sense in the general case.