Knowledge Base
Estate planning fundamentals, asset protection, legacy planning, and the legal frameworks that ensure your wealth goes where you intend — not where the courts decide.
73 articles in this category — page 4 of 7
Criss cross inheritance is a reciprocal estate planning structure where each spouse creates a will leaving their estate to the other, with assets held in trust rather than transferred outright. The surviving spouse benefits from the trust during their lifetime, and the combined estate passes to name
Oil and gas royalty trusts are passive, finite-life vehicles that collect royalty income from producing properties and distribute virtually all of it to unitholders. They do not drill, explore, or reinvest capital. That structure creates genuinely attractive after-tax yields for high-bracket investo
International trusts remain one of the most misunderstood structures in high-net-worth planning. The core concept is straightforward: a settlor transfers assets to a trustee in a foreign jurisdiction, who holds and manages those assets for named beneficiaries under the laws of that jurisdiction. Wha
A california quitclaim deed to living trust transfer is one of the most common estate planning moves for property owners in the state, and also one of the most misunderstood. Done correctly, it keeps your real estate out of probate, preserves your Prop 13 base year value, and passes title to heirs w
The unit trust vs mutual fund distinction matters more at $5M+ than it does for retail investors, and not for the reasons most articles cover. The structural differences between these two vehicles create meaningfully different outcomes across tax efficiency, estate planning, institutional access, an
The inheritance papers required to settle a $5M+ estate go well beyond a signed will. You are looking at a coordinated stack of legal instruments: the will or trust agreement, letters testamentary, court filings, tax returns (Forms 706 and 1041), beneficiary designation records, and asset-specific o
Proposition 19, which took effect February 16, 2021, fundamentally restructured how California taxes inherited property. The parent-child exclusion that let heirs preserve a parent's Prop 13 assessed value on any property now applies only to a primary residence, only when the child moves in within o
Placing property in a land trust does not eliminate your property tax obligation. The legal structure holding title is largely irrelevant to local assessors, who tax based on ownership and use. What does change, depending on trust type and jurisdiction, is who pays, how much, and what planning oppor
Setting up an irrevocable life insurance trust (ILIT) typically costs $3,000 to $20,000 in attorney fees alone, plus $2,500 to $5,000 annually in ongoing trustee and administrative expenses. For estates between $7M and $27M, that irrevocable life insurance trust cost is arguably the most efficient t
GST trusts let you transfer assets to grandchildren or later generations while applying a single lifetime exemption, rather than watching wealth erode through successive rounds of estate tax at each generational transfer. For anyone holding $10M or more, the math on that difference is not subtle.
There is no inheritance tax in NZ. New Zealand abolished estate duty in 1992 and gift duty in 2011, confirmed by the IRD, leaving no direct tax on wealth transferred at death or by gift. For high-net-worth individuals, that is the headline. The nuance is everything underneath it.
The term "deed of inheritance" gets used loosely, and that looseness costs people money. In U.S. property law, there is no standardized legal instrument by that name. According to the Uniform Law Commission, the primary legal framework for non-probate real property transfers at death is the Uniform