We invest a lot of time and energy figuring out the best way to pass wealth from one generation to the next. But how can anyone truly prepare for the practical realities of settling a family member’s estate while grieving and managing the impact of this loss on the family? This session will outline some of the things you can be thinking about now to be prepared for a death in the family.
Resource Search
The death of a loved one is a difficult and emotional time for a family. There is often additional stress if you are appointed as the executor of the will and trustee of your family’s trusts, especially if the deceased had been the sole manager of substantial family assets and wealth. For an untrained person, it can be a daunting role. For these reasons and more, many families are choosing not to appoint a family member or close friend to be their executor and trustee. Rather, they are choosing a professional trustee company to act either solely or jointly with a family member.
As families prepare for an unprecedented $30 trillion transition of generational wealth, the focus is turning from “WHAT” needs to be done to the all-important “HOW” this will occur?
Estate planning is an ongoing process and is about much more than reducing taxes—it’s about ensuring your family is provided for, your business can continue, and your charitable goals are achieved. Having a plan that reflects your current financial and family situation, and regularly reviewing it to ensure it fits any changes in your circumstances, will help preserve for your heirs what it took a lifetime to build.
For many ultra-wealthy family clients, implementing estate planning strategies to minimize income, estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes is a top concern. Recent changes to income and transfer tax laws have opened new avenues to transferring wealth. Bryan Austin discussed the use of power of appointment strategies and their tax implications and took a deeper look at the Power of Appointment Support Trust to demonstrate the income and transfer tax benefits, to the clients and their extended families.
Teaching children about personal finance, owning foreign assets, assessing the impact of tax extenders, and staying current on the Net Investment Income Tax are topics that many high net worth individuals must address in an on-going basis. Understanding the often highly complex issues and ever changing rules are challenging for even the most diligent individual.
For each parcel of real property owned, the local assessor sends a Notice of Assessment, Taxable Valuation, and Property Classification. If it hasn’t already been received, it is on its way to the mailbox. Printed on the top of the Notice in big, red capital letters is: THIS IS NOT A BILL. So, most people are inclined to throw the Notice away. Don’t. The Notice lists five important things about the property as determined by the assessor, including the appeal process deadline.
In addition to passing on knowledge, there are various ways to pass on wealth, and that is where smart estate planning and planned gifts come into play. This guide seeks to give you a quick reference to how families can manage wealth, considering taxes, additions of new family members, managing risk, and charitable objectives. It addresses issues common to high-net-worth families, and it should help identify issues most relevant to families and their wealth advisors.
Squeeze, Freeze, and Burn. It sounds like an odd phrase, but it is actually a term used to describe a highly effective estate planning technique. It’s so effective, in fact, that as early as this September the IRS is expected to change some of the rules governing the “Squeeze” aspect—but more on that later.
Establishing a Private Family Trust Company (PFTC) is a significant step in a family’s evolution from managing its wealth to institutionalizing its family governance, trustee processes and strategic direction as a family enterprise. In this session, the PFTC Network community comes together for a discussion around lessons learned when forming a Private Trust Company.