Wealth Enhancement is the process of using proven strategies to maximize the tax efficiency of current assets and cash flow, while achieving both growth and preservation. This includes cash flow analysis and tax planning. We assist our clients in developing and maintaining highly focused spending plans while harnessing all sources of cash flow to meet their goals and objectives.

We have found that 84 percent of affluent investors are interested in mitigating the effects of income taxes. In collaboration with our clients’ individual and business tax professionals, we seek to minimize the tax impact of investment and financial planning decisions, making more of our clients’ money available for reaching their goals.

Wealth Transfer is the process of finding and facilitating the most tax-efficient way to pass assets to succeeding generations and to do so in a way that meets your wishes. Planning for this inevitability now allows you to:

1. Decide how assets will be distributed at death, rather than relying on intestate rules of the state of residency.
2. Decide how and when heirs receive inheritance.
3. Ensure that the maximum amount possible is transferred to heirs while minimizing tax implications.
4. Provide for liquidity needs of illiquid estates.

Proactive estate planning allows our clients to control the future of their financial resources after death. This allows them to ensure that heirs are taken care of, a concern that 79.2% of affluent clients share. By planning now, we help mitigate estate taxes and our clients are given control over the distribution of their assets to heirs rather than allowing assets to be allocated by intestate laws or faulty, un-coordinated estate planning. In collaboration with our clients’ estate planning professionals and our Expert Team, we have found that estate planning is divided into four major levels:

1. Level One: Simple wills, powers of attorney, advanced directives, powers of attorney for healthcare and living wills--the most basic forms of estate planning
2. Level Two: Tax sensitive estate planning, including non-business advanced planning for estates larger than the lifetime exemption amount
3. Level Three: Tax sensitive estate planning including business advanced planning, transfer and freeze techniques--including all onshore strategies
4. Level Four: Ultra-wealth strategies including levels 1-3 as listed above and off-shore transfer techniques. NOTE: Level four strategies have a very high level of risk when not implemented and maintained appropriately. They are expensive to implement and maintain properly and are rarely recommended

Wealth Protection is the process of employing legally acceptable concepts and strategies to ensure that a person’s wealth is not unjustly taken from them. Its objective is to identify risks--either personal or business--that may have a negative impact on our affluent clients. Proven strategies are then implemented to either defer the risk to an outside insurance company or mitigate the risk through the development of appropriate structural changes.

In collaboration with risk specialists who are members of our Expert Team or our clients’ existing advisory team, we analyze the risks associated with the following insurable areas: automotive, homeowners, personal articles, watercraft, airplane, director’s and officer’s liability, personal liability umbrellas, household employees, life insurance, disability insurance, and long term care insurance. We then develop appropriate recommendations regarding adjustments and changes that may be needed to insulate our clients from these risks.

Risks that may not be insured--including risks of litigation, excessive general liability, divorce, creditor claims and other risks--are structurally minimized using legal strategies and other transfers.

Finally, Charitable Gifting is important in many of our clients’ lives. Through extensive discussions with our clients, we develop a charitable gifting strategy that will guide our use of gifting techniques to meet our clients’ philanthropic intent in the most cost effective way. With proactive planning, we help our clients give in a focused manner in amounts greater than what would be possible without planning.

Strategies that may be employed include gifting of appreciated securities, matching gifts, donor advised funds, charitable trusts, and private foundations. These techniques are most effective when combined with our other advanced planning strategies and should be based on a donor’s charitable intent, not just on a desire to reduce taxes. Finally, it should be noted that many who gift their “treasure” also find great satisfaction gifting their time and talents to worthwhile causes.