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Managing family wealth over the long-term requires careful thought and a well-structured estate plan. Before making specific decisions about what’s best for your wealth, it’s wise to spend time considering what it is you really want to see happen with it. There are steps you can take—including considering trust options—to help create a legacy plan that both reflects your values and incorporates tax-efficient ways to transfer your assets.

Addressing more than the potential tax exposure, estate planning frequently requires protection of a fragile beneficiary who can include family members with disabilities, individuals struggling with addiction, spendthrifts and even minors. By handling with care through the various trust options available, wealth transfer planning can go beyond the transfer of assets by allowing for ways in which you can motivate, and at times protect, your loved ones.

When seeking to preserve the family legacy and wealth, families can create custom-tailored trusts to meet their specific needs and goals. In this overview, learn about why families form trusts, the different types of trusts available, the essential role of trustee, and why families might choose a bundled trust structure versus a Directed Trust structure versus a Private Family Trust Company.

Retaining access to the assets in a trust is an important factor, and it can be done by creating a Wyoming Incomplete Gift Non-Grantor (WING) Trust. This one-sheeter provides a four-step overview of the WING Trust entity and transaction structure.

A private family trust company (PFTC) provides families with intergenerational governance over family assets and a private forum for decision-making. Without proper management, however, a PFTC can be exposed to costly litigation and the potential for significant liability. By developing and implementing policies that take into account the expertise and capacity of staff and external vendors, a PFTC can ensure it stays compliant and is able to safeguard the family’s assets well into the future.

A Dynasty Trust is often referred to as a family bank since it serves as a primary resource for the funding of the needs of a family's beneficiaries in successive generations. Given the unsteady economic times and tax uncertainty, there is no better time than now for wealthy families to establish a Dynasty Trust to achieve optimum results, including tax advantages, flexibility, and control.

Structured as an irrevocable, complex trust for the benefit of the transferor's future generations, a Dynasty Trust is an option for high-net-worth individuals to maximize the amount that can be transferred during their lifetime or upon death to support multiple generations, transfer tax free. Using an illustrated example, learn more about the advantages and disadvantages of a Dynasty Trust.

Originating in English common law, trusts have been used for centuries to manage holdings of the wealthy. Even though trusts are quite common, many people may find them hard to understand. Having an introduction to the trust basics is a good place to begin and learn how trusts are used in wealth management plans to help provide financial support for family members, protect family assets from a myriad of risks, and help mitigate taxes.

The ownership and governance structure of a private family trust company (“PFTC”) is highly customizable. This is important because all families are different, with different goals, family dynamics, asset composition, family sizes, and family affiliates. With that in mind, there are some key considerations in structuring the entity ownership and governance of a PFTC, both tax-related and not tax-related.