Q. What is the basic idea behind FAMILY Wealth Preservation?
A. Every family that has been fortunate enough to accumulate some wealth needs to have a specific plan on how to protect that wealth. There are many ways to loose that wealth to: lawyers, creditors, bad investment advisors, the IRS, state and local governments and others.
Q. What sorts of areas are covered by FAMILY Wealth Preservation?
A. Some people call this area estate planning. However, it is so much more than that. Protecting your family’s wealth can involve:
- income tax planning
- charitable gift planning
- property tax planning
- family management issues
- pre-divorce planning
- IRS estate taxes
- dynasty trust concepts
- life insurance requirements
- general insurance needs
- asset protection planning
- cross border real estate
- using limited partnerships
- trusts and/or corporations
- use of money managers
- using outside trustees
…and many other topics which relate to interpersonal relationships of multi-generational family members.
Q. What should most adult children of wealthy parents do now?
A. If your parents have wealth there should be an evaluation of their risks. Retain the services of an independent and knowledgeable person(s) who can look at their portfolio, their insurance coverages, their exposure to potential lawsuits, look into their current estate plan and determine if there are IRS approved methods of lowering the IRS death taxes, and do an overall assessment of what they have now and how they might lose it in the future.
Q. What should wealthy parents do now?
A. Wealthy parents need to do several things right now. First, they need to get a better understanding of what their current situation is and what can be done to improve it. This can mean sitting down with their children and their estate planning lawyer for the express purpose of fixing any problem areas that they have in their estate plan.
Call today (310) 266-0506
to set up an initial consultation.