Estate Planning For Wall Street Executives

Are you a financier in downtown Manhattan? Are you a stock broker, CPA, hedge fund manager, or a financial analyst? Business men and women working on Wall Street know the ins and outs of securities whether we are discussing stocks yielding high dividends, treasury bonds, or exchange traded funds. As a Wall Street Estate Lawyer, I have come to the realization these brilliant individuals lack some of the basic tenants when it comes to estate planning and probate. I find this to be a crucial deficiency in their plethora of knowledge of all things dealing with finance. Why? Proper estate planning will save you a high tax bill on the day of your death. When comparing what your inheritance tax will be if you utilize a trust, the difference in the tax owed is significant if you were to not hire an estate planning lawyer.

What happens when you put money, securities, and other property into a trust? You no longer own it. The trust owns it. How can you owe inheritance tax on something you don’t own? Exactly. You typically don’t owe estate tax on what is in the trust.

A trust is a very simple concept – it is a legal arrangement in which you put assets into the vehicle in order for another party to manage it. The other party manages the funds in order to provide your beneficiary the assets either in increments or all at once. We call this third party the trustee. They manage the trust and all of its funds. The beneficiary could be your children or whoever it is you choose to be so they may benefit from all the assets put into the trust. You have full control of how the trust operates. You create the terms. You can decide at what age your beneficiary's are allowed to be provided the funds in the trust. You can even go so far as to say they have to accomplish certain tasks to be eligible to receive the property within the trusts.

We highly recommend you contact a Wall Street Estate Lawyer to get insight on all the complexities of how trusts work. A New York Estate Planning Lawyer is essential when you are looking to establish a trust as well as getting an understanding of the probate process. Trusts come in all shapes and sizes. You have Bare Trusts, Discretionary Trusts, Mixed Trusts, Non-resident Trusts, and many more. They all apply to different circumstance you find yourself in.

What types of property can be put into a trust? Real estate such as co-ops, condos, and houses, securities from common stock to preferred stock, AAA rated Bonds, jewelry, art, etc. Some items may be more difficult to put into a trust then others.

---------------------------------

Kamilla Mishiyeva, Esq., is a New York State Bar admitted attorney with experience in  working with guardianships, trusts, wills, probate proceedings and litigation, administration, and estate planning. If you are in New York and specifically the downtown Manhattan Wall Street area, do a service to yourself and contact this attorney with any questions you may have on how to properly manage your assets in such a way that your loved ones will be comfortable at the time of your death.