Estate Planning

You’ve Built It…Now Protect It

Estate Planning Strategies

While retirement planning often appears to focus on income strategies and building assets, we also must face the inevitable. What will happen to your estate when you pass away? The estate planning process helps you to identify the values of your assets, decide how to pass on those assets to your heirs, and helps you develop strategies to avoid excessive taxes or any extra burden upon your loved ones.

For business owners, estate planning takes on a new dimension: Who will take over for you? What will happen to your life’s work? What about your employees?

It’s easy to see why this process often becomes confusing and emotional. We assemble a team of experts to help you make the best possible decisions with regard to estate planning. With contributions from tax professionals, insurance experts, financial advisors and estate planning attorneys, you can put together a comprehensive plan that matches your final wishes.

Legacy Planning

Your primary estate planning goal probably revolves around making sure your loved ones are financially comfortable after you are gone. You might also wish to bestow a legacy upon a certain charitable or community organization. We will help you meet those goals while guiding you toward the most efficient ways to accomplish them.

Estate Tax Mitigation

Comprehensive financial planning will focus not only on your investments but also on tax strategies. After you pass away, your entire estate could be subject to significant estate taxes, depending upon how your assets are allocated. You don’t want your heirs to be forced to sell assets just to pay the tax bill!

That’s why balancing your assets across trusts, forms of life insurance, and other vehicles is so important. The right financial strategy won’t focus solely on building assets, but also on sheltering them from excessive taxation after you pass away.

Trust Management

Trusts carry a variety of benefits, but they can also complicate your estate plan. Seeking expert guidance will help you manage your trust(s) while meeting your long-term objectives.

Asset Protection

Often, advisors make the mistake of focusing only on maintaining assets, rather than incorporating an estate plan into a client’s long-term strategy. You actually don’t want to remove so many assets from your estate that your surviving spouse loses the minimum allowable exclusion amount. We work closely with your attorney and tax professional to ensure that assets are protected, while maintaining that important tax exclusion for your spouse.