Private split dollar can help freeze an estate, minimize gift taxes, provide access to cash values, and finance needed or desired insurance for family members. Properly structured, death benefits may be excluded from the insured's taxable estate and even passed to many successive generations if a dynasty-type trust is used.
Properly evaluating alternative investments requires more time and specialized experience than many advisors have. Often, the best option for them is to find a fully outsourced due diligence provider, say the authors, who offer guidance in finding such a provider.
In a series of articles, the author has written about problems of trust and distrust in family enterprises. In the third in the series, he discusses a fictionalized case of an owner who resists forming, or even learning about, professional family offices. The article analyzes ways advisors can persist (without being fired) in raising the issues a founder needs to address for the family's long-term health.
Thoughtful and discerning families of wealth understand that they have a responsibility to create the framework for a family legacy plan that promotes family continuity, manages change within the family, and articulates clear roles for all of the wealth owners in the family.
The state of corporate profits, balance sheets and valuations make the author confident that 2011 is a much healthier environment for U.S. equities than 2008. Despite the emotional trauma investors experience in these types of markets, the silver lining is that the capital markets are forcing policymakers to confront the core issues.
This is an environment that will see policy mistakes and prompt many questions and likely new fears. But it is one strong enough to produce the cash flows the world needs to fund the pay-down of long-term debt as well as long-term investors' strategic investment management plans.
Mission investing offers the opportunity to potentially shape and scale desired social outcomes as a complement to effective grant making and other philanthropic activities. Success requires planning, blending program and financial teams, rigorous investment processes, and building applicable social metrics.
Because of the uncertainty as to what the new congressional bipartisan joint committee will do, it is important that individuals who want to take advantage of existing estate planning techniques talk with their advisors now to find out whether such planning is appropriate based on their circumstances.
Changes in tax laws have made the long-term, or dynasty, trust a particularly attractive means to transfer wealth to multiple generations free of estate taxes. However, the expiration of certain exemptions in 2013 means individuals need to act soon to realize the maximum benefit of these trusts.
Identifying potential hazards and doing advance planning can reduce the dangers of serious injury or loss of life from an earthquake. For example, repairing deep plaster cracks in ceilings and foundations, anchoring overhead lighting fixtures to the ceiling, and following local seismic building standards can help reduce the impact of these disasters.