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Estate Planning

Estate Planning as Part of Your Wealth Management Strategy

While wealth management focuses on the current state of a client's investments and assets, comprehensive estate planning can help grow and protect wealth for generations to come. If you haven’t integrated estate planning into your wealth management strategy, you should consider its benefits. Keep reading to learn more about estate planning and how you can use legal vehicles such as wills, trusts, and insurance to protect and build your wealth.

Looking for expert help with your wealth management strategy? Check out our good friends at Farther. They help clients identify wealth management strategies, including estate planning and other tools powered by modern technology. Check out Farther.com today to learn more.

What Is Estate Planning

Estate planning focuses on how you want your assets handled in the event of your death or incapacitation. This process involves a variety of legal documents, including wills, powers of attorney, and trusts to help carry out your final wishes. Estate planning for high-net-worth individuals also focuses on maximizing inheritance possibilities for beneficiaries while minimizing potential tax burdens.

What Is Wealth Management

Professional wealth management advisors carry out wealth management on behalf of their clients for a percentage of annual growth. They help provide a broad view of their client's wealth and guide them through different money management tools according to their financial goals. This could include investment advice, accounting, taxes, retirement planning, and estate planning.

6 Ways Estate Planning Can Help Grow & Protect Your Wealth

By combining estate planning with your wealth management strategy, you can protect your assets and lay the foundation for generational wealth building. Read on to explore six ways estate planning can help boost your wealth management strategies. 

1. Protects Assets & Investments

Without a proper estate plan in place, you risk your assets going to the probate court in the event of your death. In this case, the court will ultimately decide what to do with your wealth and investments. With proper estate planning, you can rest assured that your assets are transferred to the people or organizations you want to receive them.

2. Minimizes Tax Burden

Estate planning also focuses on minimizing any potential tax obligations when the transfer of your assets occurs. Some common tools used for this purpose include:

  • Formation of a trust
  • Annual gifting to heirs
  • Charitable giving

3. Provides Added Safety With Diversified Insurance Policies

As you progress through your estate planning, you might come across some tough questions. For example, who will you choose to pay your mortgage or take care of your children if you’re unable to do so? For many of these important questions, finding the right insurance policy could be the answer. By setting up the right coverage now, you could save thousands if you ever need to use your policy. Here’s a few types of coverages to consider while estate planning:

  • Life Insurance
  • Long-Term Disability Insurance
  • Long-Term Care Insurance
  • Umbrella Insurance

4. Benefits Your Family 

Many people adopt a wealth management strategy to plan how they will take care of their family financially. With estate planning, you can carefully choose how you want to transfer your assets and investments to family members. For example, you can maximize the potential assets loved ones will receive, or determine an amount to give to children or dependents in the future. Executors and family trusts can also help dictate how funds are used, allowing you to guide financial care for loved ones in the way you see best. 

5. Shields Investments & Other Assets in a Trust

While death and taxes remain a certainty for us all, there are other common threats to your assets. For instance, there are more lawsuits filed in the United States than any other country on earth. Establishing an irrevocable trust while estate planning is one way to keep your assets protected from lawsuits, creditors, and other threats, both for you and your family. This type of trust will limit courts and creditors from seeking retributions from your personal assets, not the trust's assets. This is possible because an irrevocable trust has the following characteristics:

  1. It cannot be canceled or amended
  2. A separate trustee controls the trust
  3. The trust files its own income taxes separate from you

6. Provides a Financial Roadmap for Retirement & Beyond

One benefit that estate planning and wealth management share is that they help you consider long-term plans and goals. Plus, both tools can be customized to the individual. How you choose to use them will depend on where you are going and the people in your life that are important to you. Together, these financial strategies will help guide you from your current financial state to retirement and, eventually, help create a legacy you'll be proud of. 

Get Long-Term Support With Your Estate Planning

Getting where you need to go requires a guide that has been there before. Our close friends at Farther have helped countless people by providing a road map to estate planning, wealth management, and beyond. They rely on more than experience and employ the latest technology to ensure success along the way. Start your estate planning today with a quick visit to Farther.com.

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