What is Possible with a Well-Planned Legacy?
When optimally designed and implemented, your gift and estate plan can profoundly and positively impact the people and causes you care about. We not only believe that you can choose your own legacy, but we believe you can create a legacy of freedom and choice for those you love for future generations. You can have the peace of mind that results from knowing your family will feel protected and will have the freedom to make choices they otherwise may not have been able to make, such as pursuing occupations, dreams, or endeavors that are deeply meaningful to them.
What Gets in the Way?
An estate plan is of utmost importance for creating a positive legacy for future generations.
However, if you are like many of our clients when they first come to us, you may have some of the following concerns:
You are worried about the amount of taxes you may have to pay that could limit the amount of wealth you are able to give to the people and causes you care about.
You wonder if the choices you make for your wealth will have a positive impact on the lives of those you love or could be a detriment to them in some way.
You may wonder if you can truly ensure who your wealth will end up with, no matter what circumstances occur. For example, a common concern for our clients is that much of their wealth could end up with their child’s spouse, should a divorce take place.
You know you are going to have to make some difficult personal choices, which may feel daunting, and you struggle with how best to handle delicate family dynamics.
You feel uncertain about the future of your business. For example, will be sufficient liquid assets to pay the estate taxes on the value of the business? Who will continue the operation of the business? Which members of your family will be involved in the business and how do you provide for those who will not?
If you can relate to any or all of these concerns, we can help you.
The Choose Your Legacy™ Process
We want you to know that it is possible for you to choose who will be in control of your wealth throughout future generations and that you can pass down your wealth in a way that preserves your values and protects the people and causes you love.
Through our Choose Your Legacy™ process, we can guide you in designing an estate plan that helps you minimize taxes, maximize the protection of your assets, and gives you the confidence that you are creating a positive impact in the lives of those you care about for generations to come.
What we are known for most at Erwin & Marcus is choice.
One of the key points of differentiation in our work is in showing you that there are options and opportunities available to you of which you may be unaware.
For example, when our clients first come to us, many of them do not know that there are several ways they can avoid taxes, and we guide them in choosing which strategies are right for their particular situation and how to combine them to have a powerful, cumulative effect.
Furthermore, we work with our clients to put the pieces of their financial puzzle and personal goals together in a way for them to make optimal choices that are right for the legacy of their business, family, and the causes most meaningful to them.
Ultimately, we believe that you can choose how you are going to be remembered and how your legacy will live on through the decisions you make in building your estate plan. We empower you to do just that through our Choose Your Legacy™ process.
Collaborate- We begin by gaining a deep understanding of what is most important to you and the details of your financial life so that we can uncover as many opportunities and options for your estate plan as possible. By getting to know your personal goals, your family, your values, and your vision, as well as the details of your assets, we can put together the pieces of your estate-planning puzzle in a personalized way to achieve your legacy goals. We also collaborate with your financial advisors and accountant so that we can create the most well-informed plan.
Create - We then create the outline of your individualized plan and draft each document, making sure we include the necessary elements to meet your specific needs and goals, from the fundamental documents to the more advanced documents which address, for example, business succession planning, leveraging the lifetime gift and generation-skipping transfer tax exemptions, and charitable planning.
Implement - After the documents have gone through a careful review process and have been approved by you, the plan is implemented by signing the documents with the appropriate formalities, giving you the peace of mind that your gift and estate legacy plan is implemented.
We recommend staying connected and meeting at least every 3-5 years to determine whether there have been changes in your financial situation or personal life that would warrant adjustments to your plan to ensure your legacy remains properly protected and to explore whether there are further planning opportunities that you may want to take advantage of to enhance your plan and your legacy.
Are you ready to have an estate plan you are confident in and a legacy that truly inspires you?
Building meaningful legacies is our passion. We would love to meet with you to show you how you can Choose Your Legacy™.