Estate & Gift Tax Planning
For families with substantial or appreciating assets, well-considered gifting and trust strategies can reduce future estate taxes and support a lasting family legacy. We work with your tax and financial advisors to weigh the opportunities alongside your needs for access, flexibility, and financial security.
Lifetime gifts mean giving up access to and control over what you transfer, and carry income-tax trade-offs. Portability of a spouse’s unused exclusion requires a timely election and eligibility. A SLAT is designed to keep transferred property and its growth outside both spouses’ taxable estates only when the applicable requirements are met.
Ways we put this into practice
Tools and who they suit
- Spousal lifetime access trusts (SLATs)
- Annual exclusion and lifetime gifting
- Portability elections for married couples
- Coordination with your CPA and financial advisor
- Estates that may exceed the federal exemption
- Families with appreciating real estate or stock
How a SLAT works
- Youthe donor spouse
- then: lifetime gift
- SLATirrevocable trustYour spouse can receive distributions during their lifetime
- then: after your spouse's lifetime
- Childrenor later generations
Designed to exclude the transferred property and its growth from both spouses' taxable estates when applicable requirements are met.
See how it works, step by step
- How a GRAT works: an illustrated example A hypothetical two-year grantor retained annuity trust, step by step, with the assumptions behind each figure.
- How a life insurance trust works: an illustrated example A hypothetical comparison showing how the ownership of a $10 million policy can affect estate taxes, with its assumptions.
- How a dynasty trust works: an illustrated example A hypothetical comparison showing how a dynasty trust may preserve more for later generations, with its assumptions.
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