Businesses- Closely Held and/or Family Owned
Continuation Planning and Reviews
If you own a business it's probably one of the most valuable items on your balance sheet. If you have more than one owner you will have an operating agreement that would detail what happens in any one of several triggering events like death, retirement, disability or divorce. If you are the sole owner your subject to the same concerns, but may not have a default plan in place. The valuation methodology triggers definitions and what happens at those triggers should be reviewed an updated well in advance an actual need when it's, too, late.
Exit Planning
You may have entertained an offer from outside the company for your business or wondering if it's worth purchasing the equipment or hiring the additional people needed to compete beyond your current market. You might like to keep the business for your family, but you are open to selling, too. You may know you are doing well, but well enough? What's the dollar amount I need to be able to walk away and be financially secure? Until you know that number all the other numbers are just valueless cost of lost opportunity figures, which don't clarify what you'd really like to base your decisions around, which ultimately should be your values.
Executive Benefits and Nonqualified Plan Design and Funding
A critical mission of any organization is the ability to attract and retain key people and talent. Another for closely held and family-owned businesses often is to do so in a manner that may not involve the giving, bonusing or selling of actual equity in the business. There are many reasons for key employees to not want equity in one of these types of businesses, too. The good news is there are many options to arrive at solutions that can help the business and the key persons get what matters most economically, emotionally and relationally.
Trusts and Personal Planning
We provide you with the capabilities of an in-house technology team without the overhead and cost.
Trust & Estate Planning
Today it's crucial to know the cost basis of all significant assets in order to effectively compare the tax costs of transferring and owning an asset off the personal balance sheet and owning it in trust to avoid estate taxation vs. retaining the asset as part of the personal balance sheet and rereceiving the step up in basis if left in the estate for clients with federally taxable estates.
We've built special software to quantify concepts and arrive at the net tax benefits in order to have the facts that are required to make high-quality decisions.
Planned Giving
We've designed plans for individual donors, law and wealth management firms to implement large gifts over time that coordinated with and supplemented the current gift needs and plans of nonprofits. All the while, integrating planned giving into the personal tax and financial goals of the clients.
We have developed specialized software that is patent pending and literally one of a kind and unique for the use of charitable remainder trusts that identifies income tax and investment opportunities that only came into existence after the ATRA law changes in 2013.
The same software also uniquely illustrates actual short tax years and real payment schedule dates and not just conceptual dates unlike all other software programs we are aware of. We are specialists in the area of CRT design and administration.
Life Insurance Review and Placement
Life Insurance Reivews
Most permanent life insurance products have been issued and illustrated with assumed crediting rates, dividends and other assumptions based on the interest rates that prevailed at the time of issuance. Because interest rates have generally fallen the last 30 years and agents generally showed current rates and not reduced rates, most life insurance policies have underperformed from their initial illustrations and need to be reviewed as to how to manage the policy best to pay the benefit or a benefit when targeted. Often times the policy owner may need to reduce the death benefit, except a shortened death benefit duration, increase premiums, change dividend elections, consider policy alternatives or some combination. Our reviews are thorough, concise (generally no more than four pages) and actionable with the exact answers to the options spread-sheeted on one page to enable good decision making and comparisons of the options. You don't need a 40-page review to justify a ridiculous fee that some other service charge. Our 4-page review gets to the heart of the matter and options quickly.
Life Insurance Placement
The use of life insurance in estate, business and philanthropic planning is common. We often hear professional advisors claim to "believe or not believe" in the use of life insurance. The issue shouldn't be a matter of faith.
Life insurance products, integrated within and supporting other planning objectives, can and should be conceptually and numerically modeled within those plans in order to determine under what circumstances it would and would not improve favorable planning outcomes and/or negate unfavorable or unacceptable ones.
We've built specific and truly unique analysis tools for the accurate numerical and conceptual evaluation of advanced life insurance plan designs within the planning framework and in support of higher planning objectives.