Would you decide to get married based on the effect of a marriage penalty in the tax code? If so, I would suggest you take another look at your betrothed.

It's always seemed to me that the tax law should be a minor – if at all – influence on life's biggest decisions. I didn't buy a home (you'll notice I didn't say "house") because of the mortgage interest deduction, and I didn't walk down the aisle thinking of all those personal exemptions I could now legally create (by the way, they cost a fortune).

The tax law – which I obviously think is important since I've worked in it for almost 30 years – should never be that important. Well, I may have been mistaken.

According to a story in today's Wall Street Journal, people are making life and death decisions based on the irresponsibility of Congress in allowing the estate tax, and the generation-skipping transfer tax, to expire for one year: 2010. This is the result of a 2001 law – read gambit – that started lowering the hit from the estate tax with the intention of eliminating it. But because of budget rules, the estate tax could only be repealed for one year – next year. It comes roaring back in 2011. The thought at the time was that Congress would fix it before 2010. Bad bet there.

With the estate tax possibly gone for one year – although Senate leaders say they will bring it back retroactively (another potential bad bet there) – taxpayers and practitioners have the opportunity to save rich estates tons of money. And, by the way, they have the right to do that under our system – no one should pay more taxes than they legally have to.

The Journal quotes Joshua Rubenstein, a lawyer with Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP in New York, who says, "I have two clients on life support, and the families are struggling with whether to continue heroic measures for a few more days. Do they want to live for the rest of their lives having made serious medical decisions based on estate-tax law?"

The Journal article goes on to say, "To make it easier on their heirs, some clients are putting provisions into their health-care proxies allowing whoever makes end-of-life medical decisions to consider changes in estate-tax law."

Excuse me, but this is freaking madness. Our tax system's main job is to collect the revenue we need to run the government. I believe the estate tax is a good thing – for many reasons. But right now, as far as I'm concerned, we can keep it or not. But let's make up our minds, which our government has collectively seemed to have lost.

Putting people in the position of making life and death decisions over a tax is insane. (And they're all to blame – Republicans and Democrats.) The estate tax mess is further evidence of the dysfunction of our legislative process. Maybe Congress ought to do what the estate tax will do: Take a year off and leave us alone.

But let me end on a positive note, Happy New Year to all.