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Reach out to Stewart Law by phone 704-552-5160 or our contact form.
Advisor Resources
We find these guidelines helpful to our colleagues in various advisory roles including accounting, legal, and finance.- Family Limited Partnership
Because we work as part of a client’s advisory team along with accountants, attorneys and financial advisors, we provide these resources to them.
Checklists
If a client asks you to look at his/her old estate planning documents, this is a checklist you can use to help you evaluate the existing plan.
Diagrams
This diagram shows the flow of assets in an estate plan that uses a Family Trust and an Outright Distribution to the spouse utilizing disclaimer funding of the Family Trust for maximum flexibility.
This diagram shows the flow of assets in an estate plan using a Family Trust and a Spousal Trust in order to maximize testator control.
Client establishes a trust with appropriate Trustee and transfers assets to the trust in order to protect them from future creditors. As the client’s investment advisor, you can still manage the investments, whether or not you or your firm is serving as the Trustee.
Client establishes a trust and can generate an income tax deduction, avoid estate tax and generate an income stream for life or a term of years.
Enables client to make annual exclusion (currently $13,000 per calendar year) gifts to children or grandchildren and name a Trustee to help manage the assets and protect them in case of divorce, bankruptcy, tort claims, etc.
Client establishes a limited partnership or LLC with benefits that can include: protecting assets from creditors, centralizing management of investments, reducing estate and gift taxes, and facilitating transfers to descendants or others (or a trust for their benefit).
Client establishes a trust that can be used to transfer some of the appreciation on assets (such as closely-held stock) to children or other beneficiaries in a manner that eliminates estate and gift taxes. Client will retain an income stream from the assets for a term of years selected by the client.
Client establishes a trust and can avoid having the life insurance includable in his/her taxable estate thus saving estate taxes on the value of the death benefit.
Usually the objectives are similar to those with the GRAT (see above) technique. Can help achieve an estate “freeze” and pass assets to children or other beneficiaries without paying estate or gift tax on all of the future appreciation in value of the assets.
Shows how a client can use more than one entity to achieve stronger results, especially in terms of protecting assets from creditors.
Client establishes a non-profit corporation to serve as the family’s charitable vehicle and can be entitled to income and estate tax benefits for assets contributed to the entity.
Client establishes a trust to hold his/her primary residence or a vacation residence. The trust can transfer some of the appreciation in the value of the residence to children or other beneficiaries in a manner that eliminates estate and gift taxes.
Federal Tax Information
Chart Showing Estate, Gift and Generation Skipping Transfer (GST) tax rates and exemptions.
