Estate Planning & Wealth Transfer
Estate planning is more than completing a will and filing documents with your attorney. It’s ensuring that the legacy you’ve created helps the people and organizations closest to you reach their dreams even after you’re gone. A thoughtful estate plan lets you pass on your assets the way you want, maximizing the financial benefit to your heirs and providing comfort during a difficult time in their lives.
Our Approach to Estate Planning and Wealth Transfer
Document Review & Flow Charting
As a core component of our financial planning process, we will collect our clients’ personal legal documents such as a will, revocable living trust, power of attorney, living well, divorce decree, etc. so that we can diagram their family tree and asset ownership, flow chart estate distribution and trust funding, and understand who is serving in important fiduciary rolls like the executor, trustee, etc. This easy-to-understand estate plan review helps distill our clients’ dense legal documents into an easy-to-understand visual summary.
Estate Tax Modeling
In addition to reviewing and flow charting our clients’ estate plans, we will help estimate any potential estate tax liability that could arise due to the size of their estate.
Transaction Tax Analysis
In circumstances where owing estate tax is likely or unavoidable, clients may want to consider utilizing certain entities or strategies to minimize potential estate tax liabilities or to lock in a finite tax liability and shift asset growth to future generations. We have particular expertise working with families with either closely held businesses or significant real estate portfolios to evaluate options to maximize generational wealth transfer.
Lifetime Gifting: We can help clients evaluate locking in their lifetime exemptions today by making gifts to certain trusts or entities like Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLATs), Family Limited Partnerships (FLPs), Family Limited Liability Companies (FLLCs), children’s trusts, etc.
Estate Freeze: Some clients may not feel comfortable making a completed gift to their heirs, or they may have already utilized all their available lifetime exemption amount. In these situations, clients may want to consider certain “freeze” techniques such as intrafamily loans, Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs) or a sale to an intentionally defective grantor trust (IDGT) to lock in a value to their estate and shift appreciation to other generations.
Charitable Trusts: For clients looking to support their favorite nonprofit, who also want to support themselves or their loved ones, split interest trusts like Charitable Reminder Trusts and Charitable Lead Trusts can provide win-win solutions. These trusts split the beneficial interest into two parts: an income beneficiary and a remainder beneficiary. These split interest trusts have the ability to benefit qualified charities, as well as noncharitable beneficiaries.
Liquidity Analysis
An often-overlooked aspect of an estate is the liquidity of the assets within it. It is important to understand the composition of assets within the estate, as well as any liabilities or obligations that may need to be settled. It’s also important to understand how market conditions can affect the ability and timing of when illiquid assets can be converted to cash. It can sometimes be beneficial to utilize life insurance or a line of credit to increase the liquidity of the estate. It’s also important to make sure illiquid assets have the leadership and governance necessary to continue operating smoothly during a transitional period.
Legacy Planning
Family systems can be complex and are constantly evolving. Defining and maintaining core values, educating successor generations, developing frameworks for governance, hosting family meetings, and designing systems for conflict resolution are just a few of the many best practices that can help families preserve the family legacy and foster healthy relationships for generations. We have advanced training and a network of consultants to help evaluate and facilitate family governance planning, family meetings, and charitable planning & foundation management.
Trust & Estate Administration
Our team has extensive experience working with independent fiduciaries to help settle estates and administer trusts. We can also leverage Baird Trust to help with these services when appropriate.
Legislative Updates
Baird’s Washington Policy analyst team at Strategas is routinely recognized as one of the top teams in their field, and they regularly publish updates are articles about legislation and political events that impact taxes and estate planning.
Collaborative Estate Planning Expertise
The Liles Group’s estate planning capabilities are further supported by a dedicated team of attorneys & estate planning specialists. We regularly consult with our Advanced Planning Team for assistance with technical matters and for help creating tailored solutions for our clients’ most challenging problems.