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Estate Tax Reduction

What is Estate Planning?

Estate planning is both an art and a science. It requires the proper balance and due care that ensures a strategic approach to the all important human issues. Estate Planning when done correctly, provides the appropriate disposition of assets to family members, business associates, charitable concerns and special needs circumstances, while safeguarding the beneficiaries from issues such as creditors, bankruptcy, divorce or complacency. Estate planning is the process of arranging assets in a manner that meets lifetime financial objectives and at the same time provides for your survivors needs in the disposition of your property at death along with an appropriate strategy for the orderly payment of all costs associated with death, including the estate tax itself.

The Planning Steps

There are many steps that can take place in estate planning. We will assist you in:

1. The selection and integration of your estate planning team.
2. The gathering of necessary information.
3. The analysis of your information.
4. The coordination of the ideas and recommendations from the various financial advisors.
5. Implementation of your plan.
6. Periodic review of your plan.

Your Estate Planning Team generally includes:

Attorney
Insurance Consultant
Accountant
Financial Planner
Trust officer
Banker

Why Choose Hebets & Maguire

Estate Tax Reduction & Wealth Conservation Strategies

1. We review all existing estate planning documents such as wills, trusts, family limited partnership agreements, life insurance trusts and charitable trusts. We provide an executive summary of the content to refresh the client’s memory of the status of their current estate plan.
2. We do one or more thorough ‘fact and feeling” interviews to ensure that we completely understand t he client’s “financial goals” and “human objectives”.
3. We will conduct one or more brainstorming sessions to discuss various techniques that apply to the client’s situation. We will assist them in evaluating the suitability of each possible alternative strategy.
4. We financially model each strategy to clarify the effectiveness for income, gift and estate tax savings. A partial menu of estate planning arrangements would include the following:
   
   Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT)
   Private Annuities
   Self-Canceling Installment Notes (SCIN)
   Grantor Related Annuity Trust (GRAT)
   Intentionally Defective Grantor Trust (IDGT)
   Family Limited Partnership (FLP)
   Charitable Tax-Exempt Trust
   Annual Gifting
   Gifting of Lifetime Exemption
5. Once the planning has reasonably taken shape, we analyze the available methods of paying the actual taxes that will inevitably fall due. The sources of funds to pay the tax obligation would typically include the following:
   
   Cash or cash equivalents
   Sell assets
   Borrow from traditional lending institutions
   Borrow from the federal government when permissible
   Life Insurance
   
   We compare and contrast each of these options to assist the client in determining which approach or combination of approaches best suits his or her circumstances.
6. We work with the client’s other advisors to ensure that the plan ultimately is executed and communicated to all appropriate parties.