Trust & Estate Planning
Ensuring Your Legacy Is Defined & Maintained
Our team will collaborate with you and your legal counsel to ensure that you establish and execute an estate plan that is specifically tailored to meet your goals. Your estate plan works best when it is kept up to date with your evolving personal and financial circumstances. We will help ensure that any requisite changes to your plan are carefully considered and properly implemented.
Guidance on Trust & Estate Planning
- Analyzing your assets to help you understand how your estate and financial plan currently function
- Helping you identify structures to protect your assets and beneficiaries
- Providing insight on estate and gift tax mitigation strategies
- Identifying federal or state specific transfer regulations that may impact you
- Reviewing your plan with you to ensure that it is up to date
- Partnering with you to design a plan that is optimized for you and your loved ones
Estate planning can be an uncomfortable subject that many people prefer not to discuss because it involves confronting difficult scenarios. However, establishing an estate plan and keeping it updated is important in order to avoid unintended consequences for your family and other beneficiaries.
Comprehensive Trust & Estate Planning
REVOCABLE ESTATE PLANNING DOCUMENTS
- Primary document in a Trust-based estate plan
- Contains the dispositive provisions of your plan (i.e., who gets what)
- Primary document in a Will-based plan
- In a Trust-based plan, the Will functions in coordination with your trust to manage assets that are not in your trust at the time of your death
- Allows you to appoint an individual to act on your behalf for financial matters if you become incapacitated
- Allows you to appoint an individual to act on your behalf for medical matters if you become incapacitated
Estate Planning FAQs
A comprehensive estate plan typically includes four core documents: a revocable trust or will (which governs asset distribution), a durable power of attorney (authorizing someone to manage financial matters if you become incapacitated), a health care directive (authorizing someone to make medical decisions on your behalf), and beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and insurance policies. BakerAvenue works with clients and their legal counsel to ensure all documents are current, coordinated, and aligned with the client’s overall financial plan.
A will directs how assets are distributed after death but passes through probate, a court-supervised process that can be time-consuming and costly. A revocable trust achieves the same distribution goals while bypassing probate, providing privacy, and allowing more efficient administration across multiple states or asset types. For high-net-worth clients with complex assets, multi-state properties, or privacy concerns, a trust-based estate plan is typically the better option.
Estate tax reduction strategies vary and depend on a client’s particular circumstances and goals. Utilizing various exemptions, including the annual gift tax exclusion and/or the unified estate and gift tax exemption, are essential. Various trust structures such as Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLATs) and Grantor-Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs) can be leveraged to transfer appreciating assets outside the taxable estate. Charitable exemptions and vehicles such as charitable remainder trusts (CRTs) and donor-advised funds (DAFs) may also find their way into a design. BakerAvenue evaluates each client’s estate exposure and coordinates gifting and trust strategies with the investment and tax planning teams to help minimize transfer taxes across generations.
Estate plans should be reviewed every five or so years or after any major life event — marriage, divorce, the birth of a child or grandchild, the death of a beneficiary or named fiduciary, a significant change in net worth, or a move to a different state. BakerAvenue conducts ongoing reviews as part of its wealth management relationship to ensure the estate plan remains aligned with each client’s current circumstances and with any changes in federal or state tax law.
A corporate trustee is an institutional entity, such as BakerAvenue Trust Company, appointed to administer a trust rather than an individual family member or friend. Corporate trustees offer continuity of administration across generations, institutional investment expertise, impartiality in discretionary distribution decisions, and regulatory oversight. Corporate trustees provide value in a variety of situations including complex estate settlements, dynasty trusts administrations, or when family dynamics make an independent trustee preferable.
Baker Avenue Asset Management, LP is a Trust Representative Office of National Advisors Trust Company (NATC) and National Advisors Trust of South Dakota, Inc. (NATSD) doing business as BakerAvenue Trust Company.
Effective estate planning cannot be designed in isolation. It requires alignment with the investment portfolio (e.g., which assets to hold in trust versus individual ownership), the tax plan (e.g., timing of gifts to use exemptions before legislative changes), and the overall financial plan (e.g., ensuring liquidity for estate taxes does not require forced asset sales). BakerAvenue’s in-house integration of wealth management, tax, and estate planning allows the firm to design estate strategies that are financially coherent, tax-efficient, and executable.
Plan With Confidence.
Live With Clarity.
Transforming your wealth into the life and legacy you envision.
If you are interested in our comprehensive wealth management services, please send us a note or click to schedule an introductory meeting.
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