Ultimately, how well your wealth transfer plan fulfills your legacy and meets the needs of the next—and future—generations depends on whom you name as your trustee(s). This makes your trustee selection one of the most critical aspects of an already complex wealth planning process. To help navigate this selection process, work with a framework built around understanding your specific needs and selection criteria across three core fiduciary capabilities.
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Art collections are unique and very personal assets. Planning to build and maintain a collection, and ensuring its future, requires balancing special rules applied to collectibles and the personal and financial realities of individuals or families. When collectors, their families, and their trusted advisors engage in purposeful planning for art collections, they will be in the best position to preserve their collections and provide for a seamless, workable ownership succession.
The 2018 U.S. Trust Insights on Wealth and Worth® study asked nearly one thousand high-net-worth individuals about their approach to building wealth and the extent to which they are using it to achieve their goals and support the causes they care about most. The study found that while wealth provides the freedom to do more, it also brings increased obligations, expectations and demands.
Estate planning is often part of a divorce settlement, and negotiation of these terms can be as integral to the divorce settlement as allocation of parental responsibilities, support issues, or division of marital estate. For example, even a relatively simple Marital Settlement Agreement may generally contain waivers of an ex-spouse’s right to make claims to the other party’s estate upon death, including rights to property and to act as a trustee or executor of the estate.
Families are often overwhelmed by the complexity and sense of burden that comes with managing all the component parts of wealth across generations. More concerning, though, is the lost opportunities and the loss of capital that results from not getting it right. But owning and managing significant wealth does not have to be difficult, and learning from the ten most common mistakes that a family office investor makes can help the process become easier.
With the shift moving away from a fear-based approach to a more positive paradigm in the wealth management space, the expertise and the many advisory disciplines are adapting to the transformational journey of the family, with integrated services and professional standards emerging as best practices over time.