As the fast-moving tax reform train continues to pick up speed, Travis Lucas joins host Damien Martin in boiling down the thousands of pages of recently introduced proposed legislative text. Find out what the tax proposals might mean for you, your business, and your family.
Wealth Transfer Strategies
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Estate planning is often part of a divorce settlement, and negotiation of these terms can be as integral to the divorce settlement as allocation of parental responsibilities, support issues, or division of marital estate. For example, even a relatively simple Marital Settlement Agreement may generally contain waivers of an ex-spouse’s right to make claims to the other party’s estate upon death, including rights to property and to act as a trustee or executor of the estate.
For one reason or another, many families are reevaluating and modifying their fiduciary structures. To assist in these discussions, a reference summary of state laws is provided for consideration when establishing wealth transfer plans and structures, including taxation, trust laws, asset protection, and regulated and unregulated private trust companies. This updated summary includes a broader aggregation of top U.S. trust jurisdictions, including Wyoming, Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, and Tennessee.
Continuing a trend of the past five years, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) grew in assets under management in 2020. However, the fact remains that the ETF continues to be a one-size-fits-all solution that isn’t optimal for everyone. The flexibility of a custom passive separately managed account (SMA) can beat an ETF in terms of tax efficiency in many cases. Three advantages of the SMA illustrate the benefits.
The ownership and governance structure of a private family trust company (“PFTC”) is highly customizable. This is important because all families are different, with different goals, family dynamics, asset composition, family sizes, and family affiliates. With that in mind, there are some key considerations in structuring the entity ownership and governance of a PFTC, both tax-related and not tax-related.