Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid in Estate Planning
Signing a will or creating a trust can feel like the final step in estate planning. In reality, it is only the beginning. Documents must work alongside property titles, financial-account ownership, beneficiary designations and arrangements for making decisions if someone becomes incapacitated. When these elements contradict one another or remain incomplete, a carefully intended plan […]
The 2026 Wealth Transfer Playbook: How High-Net-Worth Families Are Rethinking Inheritance, Trusts and Legacy
Wealth transfer in 2026 is becoming less about simply deciding who inherits and more about deciding how wealth should function across generations. For high-net-worth families, inheritance planning now sits at the intersection of taxes, control, liquidity, family governance, philanthropy and the preparation of future owners. A portfolio can be transferred efficiently on paper while still […]
Family Limited Partnerships: How Family Limited Partnerships Work in Estate Planning
Families with substantial businesses, investment portfolios or real estate often face two competing estate-planning objectives: transferring wealth to the next generation while maintaining an organized system for managing the family’s assets. A Family Limited Partnership (FLP) can address that tension by separating management and control from economic ownership. Senior family members may retain management rights […]
Qualified Personal Residence Trusts: How Homeowners Can Reduce Estate Tax Exposure While Retaining the Right to Live in Their Home
A valuable home may be one of the largest assets in an estate, but homeowners often want to transfer future appreciation to their heirs without giving up the ability to live in the property today. A qualified personal residence trust (QPRT) is a specialized estate-planning structure designed around that tension. A QPRT allows a homeowner […]
Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts: How Couples Can Balance Estate Tax Planning and Lifetime Access
A married couple can transfer wealth during life and still preserve a degree of financial flexibility for the family. That combination is one reason Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts, commonly called SLATs, remain an important estate-planning strategy. For 2026, the federal estate-tax basic exclusion amount is $15 million per person. That means many families will not […]
Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts: How Wealthy Families Can Transfer Assets While Retaining Income
How can a wealthy individual transfer future appreciation to heirs while retaining an income stream from the transferred assets for a defined period? That question sits at the center of grantor retained annuity trusts, or GRATs. A GRAT is an irrevocable trust in which the grantor transfers assets while retaining a qualified annuity interest for […]
Family Business Succession Planning: The Legal Decisions Owners Should Make Before the Next Generation Takes Over
For many family businesses, the most difficult transition is not finding someone capable of running the company. It is deciding who should legally own it, who should control it, and how that transfer should occur without creating conflict among the next generation. That is why family business succession planning should begin before a founder is […]
The Step-Up in Basis: The Tax Rule That Can Reshape What Heirs Actually Pay
For wealthy families, one of the most consequential tax events can occur not when an asset is bought or sold, but when it passes from one generation to the next. A portfolio, property or private business may have accumulated decades of unrealized appreciation, yet the tax basis attached to that asset can change when its […]
Inheritance Tax: What It Is, Who Actually Pays It, and How to Reduce What You Owe
Image source Few financial topics generate more confusion than the taxes that apply when assets pass from one generation to the next. The terms inheritance tax and estate tax are frequently used interchangeably in everyday conversation, but they are two distinct levies with different structures, different payers, and different rules. Understanding the difference is the […]
The Hidden Cost of Staying Rich: Managing Wealth Beyond $100 Million
Managing wealth beyond $100 million is often far more demanding than building a fortune in the first place. Once an individual or family enters the realm of ultra-high-net-worth wealth, the challenge shifts from generating returns to preserving capital, coordinating complex assets, and ensuring that wealth serves multiple generations rather than a single lifetime. Reports from […]
