estate planning

Leverage your equity … or preserve your assets? That seems to be the choice investors are being asked to make as a result of new Freddie Mac lending guidelines coming into effect on August 1st. When Diane and I learned of the upcoming changes we immediately began brainstorming to find a solution. And, as many of you already know, what we came up with was the Trust Sandwich™.

There might be a silver lining to the lowered real estate values, at least when it comes to estate planning that has been delayed too long.

There has been a lot of talk in the past about the greatest transfer of wealth in the world’s history that is occuring right now. As aged parents pass away, many Baby Boomers are trying to escape estate taxes that they had not anticipated.

Tricks and Traps of Family Limited Partnerships. Family limited partnerships have been an effective way to transfer property to your heirs and protect your assets at the same time. But lately I’m seeing more and more FLPs that have been set up wrong, which puts all of the assets at risk and increases the chances of being targeted for an audit. Please join me for this important online workshop.

Trusts are pretty neat things. Set up properly they can be fantastic vehicles to give you tax deductions, relief from capital gain tax when selling appreciated assets, a great way to move wealth from one generation to another, and significantly lower your estate tax. They can be as simple as you like, or fantastically complex. It’s really up to you and your advisor to determine the type of trust that works best for your situation.

Several years ago, when I was just learning the ropes of the U.S. asset protection system the idea of using Limited Partnerships for families was hot. People loved them for three major reasons:

(a) Absolute General Partner control was firmly established by caselaw
(b) Tax-saving advantages
(c) Easy transfer of assets to the next generation

There was also a massive marketing push towards getting people into “family” limited partnerships. But a lot of things have changed since then. Is an FLP still a good choice?