Wealth Transfer and Estate Planning

Don’t wait to divide your assets according to your will—act now to evaluate your current assets and devise a strategy to transfer certain assets during your lifetime directly to family members or in trust. Make the current tax law and cases work for you instead of against you.

Devising a wealth transfer (estate) plan is an ongoing, evolving process and should not be left to simply writing a will and dividing up the property. Clark Nuber will work with your advisors—legal counsel, personal CFO, brokers, and others—to create a plan that helps you control the disposition of your wealth. We can help you through the maze of strategies: Family Limited Liability Companies, annual gifting, 529 College Savings Plans and Guaranteed Education Tuition Funding, Qualified Subchapter S Trusts, Charitable Remainder Trusts and others.

Even if you have a solid plan, when was the last time you conducted a detailed review of your personal balance sheet to understand exactly what and when assets will pass down to the next generation(s)? If you have experienced major events—birth, death, marriage, divorce, moving to a new state, business changes or changes in the value of your assets—you need to re-examine your plan in light of them. Let Clark Nuber help keep your wealth transfer and estate plan current, coherent and effective.

Over our many years of experience in the wealth transfer and estate planning process, we have developed proven strategies to ensure your property goes where you want it to go:

• Providing for the whole family: Learn how to leave your assets to your children, free of estate taxes, without affecting your spouse’s financial security. Your spouse can continue to receive income from the assets or have access to the principal for maintenance and health care costs, while your children do not have to pay estate taxes.
• Property management strategies: Did you know that you can give away your property while you are alive yet stay in control of it? In fact, you can keep control of the property without keeping it in your estate. In addition, as the manager of the property, you can place limitations on its ownership and use, which discounts the value of the property. The discount, in turn, lowers the gift tax.
• Life insurance strategies: You needn’t include life insurance proceeds in your taxable estate. Life insurance trusts have become important estate planning tools ever since the generation-skipping tax exemption came on the scene. It’s a great way to pass wealth directly to your grandchildren while minimizing estate taxes at the same time.