Strategies to Enhance Your Success
Estate planning is complex and continually evolves. Affluent families, aka “early adopters,” embrace the newest and best estate planning strategies. Work with us to benefit from the same estate planning strategies that affluent families do.
Here are a few techniques we recommend:
1. Maintain an up-to-date, trust-centered plan
The foundation of your estate plan must achieve your goals and needs. Wealthy people utilize estate plans with assets funded into or aligned with trusts. Make your estate plan trust-centered. Also, continually update it as your life, family circumstances, and the law grow and change. Your current estate plan should always reflects your goals—a tried-and-true secret of the affluent.
2. Create special trusts for special assets
Wealthy people take advantage of the legal and tax opportunities presented by unique assets or investments. Many assets, such as IRAs, life insurance, business ownership, and more, require specialized planning to work properly in your estate plan.
Have you saved for retirement? You know the value of an IRA, a 401(k) or another retirement plan. You are probably also familiar with the beneficiary designations for these plans. But, you may not recognize the term, “a specialized trust.” This is also called a standalone retirement trust or IRA trust. This trust designates instructions about where to place money in your IRA after you die. Has your IRA substantially accumulated? You may not want it disbursed to a beneficiary all at once. After all, you’ve worked a lifetime to save. And the IRA trust empowers you to protect what you’re leaving behind.
In a similar fashion, life insurance trusts give you more control over your life insurance benefits. This allows you to direct what occurs to your life insurance policy in more detail than with a plain beneficiary form. Naming your minor children as the beneficiaries of your policy poses risks. Until that turn 18, your kids should have a court-appointed guardian to receive funds, a potentially costly and lengthy process. Many people may decide to leave the policy benefits directly to the children’s caretaker to avoid this guardianship issue. Don’t leave the policy benefits to your children’s caretaker outright. That won’t ensure the money will be used for the benefit of your children. Instead, ask about a life insurance trust. This could protect what you’re leaving behind.
Unlike a plain beneficiary designation, a trust also lets you designate specific uses for your money by your beneficiaries. This includes things like educational funding. The wealthy don’t leave things to chance. Instead, they use proactive trust-centered planning to achieve their goals and protect their families.
3. Build a collaborative professional team
Wealthy people rarely plan and work with professionals in isolation. They know they can get better outcomes by meshing their legal, tax, and financial plans. Don’t silo your strategies with various advisors. Instead, ensure your team optimizes results through a collaborative approach.
As you build out your team, seek out professionals who are enthusiastic about working with one another across disciplines. Thus, the more visibility they have into one another’s strategies, the better they’ll be able to provide you with the best possible benefits. Call us today. We can discuss the best ways to put these and other estate planning approaches of the wealthy into action for you.
About Skvarna Law 
A skilled attorney can assist with your estate plan. Contact us today to learn about your options (909) 608-7671. We operate offices in Glendora and Upland, California. We provide legal services for individuals living in San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside Counties. This includes the cities of Upland, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Colton, Rialto, Chino, Chino Hills, Glendora, Claremont, Montclair, Pomona, La Verne, San Dimas, Azusa, Covina, West Covina, Diamond Bar, Walnut, La Puente, Corona, Norco & Mira Loma. Visit SkvarnaLaw.com to learn more.
