Estate Planning
Estate taxes can significantly impact the wealth you have accumulated unless you employ proper planning. The goals of estate planning are to provide for you financially while you're alive and to maximize your estate to benefit your family and charities following your death.
A well-designed estate plan can help create and conserve assets during your life. In addition, effective estate planning can minimize estate taxes and estate settlement costs and deliver an orderly distribution of assets at your death. We can help you with strategies for wills, trusts and beneficiary designations, estate tax reduction techniques, life insurance analysis, family gifting and charitable planning.
Wills, Trusts and Beneficiary Designations
Working with your attorney, we can review your legal documents to uncover whether they're up to date and what types of trusts are in place. Our analysis can determine whether your estate may be subject to costly delays in the probate process and the appropriate solutions for this situation. In addition, we ensure that the primary and contingent beneficiaries of your IRAs and life insurance policies are coordinated with your will and trust documents.
Estate Tax Reduction Techniques
We will help you take full advantage of strategies allowed by the Internal Revenue Code to reduce or eliminate your estate tax burden.
Life Insurance Analysis
The arrangement of your current life insurance may be causing estate taxation. We can help you determine the proper amount of insurance to help address your estate needs while taking care to keep the insurance from being taxed in your estate.
Family Gifting and Charitable Planning
Once we determine that your retirement planning is appropriate, we can work with you to understand any legacies you may wish to leave to family and charities. Many techniques are available to leave assets in a highly tax-efficient way.