Preserving and Transferring Wealth
Estate and succession planning requires coordinating multiple disciplines — tax, legal, financial, and personal considerations. We work with your legal and financial advisors to develop and implement tax-efficient strategies for wealth transfer and business succession.
Estate Tax Planning
- Estate tax projection and planning
- Gift tax strategies and annual exclusion planning
- Grantor trust strategies (GRATs, IDGTs, QPRTs)
- Charitable giving and planned giving strategies
- Life insurance planning and trust structures
- Valuation discounts for family entity transfers
Business Succession
- Business valuation for transfer planning
- Family succession structure and governance
- Buy-sell agreement design and funding
- Management transition planning
- ESOP and employee ownership strategies
- Sale to third parties and private equity
Family Wealth Planning
- Family meeting facilitation and communication
- Next generation education and preparation
- Family investment entity structuring
- Philanthropic planning and family foundations
2026 Federal Planning Checkpoints
For 2026, the federal basic exclusion amount is $15 million per individual and the annual gift-tax exclusion is $19,000 per recipient. Those amounts are starting points, not a recommendation to transfer assets. A lifetime gift can use exemption and remove future appreciation from an estate, but it can also transfer the donor's basis and give up a possible date-of-death basis adjustment. Cash-flow needs, control, creditor risk, state estate tax, generation-skipping transfer tax, and the terms of existing trusts must be modeled together.
Our CPA analysis builds an asset-and-basis inventory, projects the taxable estate under more than one growth assumption, identifies prior gifts and exemption already used, and estimates the income-, gift-, estate-, and state-tax consequences of alternatives. We coordinate those calculations with the attorney who drafts or interprets legal documents and with the investment and insurance professionals responsible for their areas.
When to Revisit the Plan
- A business sale, recapitalization, new buy-sell agreement, or material change in enterprise value
- A move to another state, marriage, divorce, death, birth, disability, or beneficiary change
- A large gift, trust distribution, charitable commitment, inherited asset, or life-insurance change
- A gap between the estate documents, beneficiary designations, entity records, and current balance sheet
Begin with our estate-tax planning decision guide and the IRS estate-tax guidance. The final plan should leave an implementation file: signed legal documents, appraisals, gift-tax returns, basis support, beneficiary confirmations, and a calendar for future filings and reviews.
Returns and Records That Preserve the Plan
Planning can fail years later when the family cannot prove basis, valuation, allocation of exemption, or the terms of a transfer. We help determine when Forms 709, 706, 8971, trust or estate income-tax returns, and state filings may be required; reconcile prior filings; and maintain a schedule of gifts and generation-skipping transfer allocations. The executor, trustee, and beneficiaries should know where the signed returns, appraisals, entity agreements, brokerage statements, and date-of-death values are stored.
Review that file after every material transfer or family change.