Wealth Transition Planning

With an aging population and the enormous transfer of wealth before us, comes a new category of financial advice: “Wealth Transition Planning”. Wealth transition planning is the process whereby your advisor helps you organize your most important financial and legal information before disability or death strike. Getting organized and staying organized helps you achieve better financial results, saves on professional fees and taxes, and, eventually, makes settling your estate faster, easier, and cheaper, with less risk for your family.

Wealth transition planning is suited to clients 50+ in age, wondering, “What’s going to happen if something happens to me?” and “How can I make things easy for my family after I’m gone?” Wealth transition planning can be used for organizing your own affairs and those of aging family members.

Time

It will usually take an executor 2 years, or up to 200 hours, to settle a simple estate. Double or triple that time to settle an average estate, worse if the estate is disorganized. Does the person(s) you’ve named as executor have this kind of spare time on their hands?

Cost

Your estate will pay 10‘s of 1,000’s of dollars more in professional fees if your affairs are disorganized and your executor is not prepared. Experienced estate lawyers now charge $500+ per hour: costs that ramp up exponentially when the estate is disorganized. Litigation is even more expensive. Accountants usually charge $300+ per hour to prepare date of death and estate tax returns, because they’re complicated: another layer of costs that increase when the estate is disorganized. Professional executors often charge 6% of the estate value.

Complexity

Most people name their children as executors: children who are busy with their own careers and families. While the tasks involved in settling most estates are not difficult, it’s a long task list and one that gets even longer when the estate isn’t clearly organized. A grieving executor, with no idea where to start, quickly becomes overwhelmed. They may procrastinate or make inadvertent errors, for which they can be held personally liable.

 

Conflict

After you’ve passed away, family friction is the last thing you want but it’s super common. Conflict is almost always rooted in poor estate organization and lack of communication with your executor. When the executor is overwhelmed, with no idea where to start and the work is not getting done in a timely manner, the wheels come off very quickly.

 

Wealth transition planning neutralizes every one of these challenges!

Getting organized and staying organized will give you enduring peace of mind and, after you’re gone, is a total game changer for your family. An organized estate gives your executor(s) immediate clarity, confidence and control. It’s faster, easier and cheaper to do the job, giving your beneficiaries more money, sooner.