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 […]
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 […]
