If you are concerned about you or your spouse exceeding the more than 11 million gift tax exclusion your decisions about estate planning really should not be influenced by someone in this forum. Sounds like you have qualified people to advise you. That being said, the marital gift exclusion is unlimited. I am not a financial advisor but it seems to me that the community property issue is moot since one spouse can “gift” community property to the other to make it their separate property and conversely commingle separately property into community property. So assets are really fungible.
