Strategies for Estate Planning
The law firm of Fischer, Zisblatt & Kiss estate planning specialists utilize a range of sophisticated techniques to enable our clients to achieve their wealth transfer goals. We have a significant track record in creating and customizing effective estate planning techniques that meet the unique financial goals of each client. We analyze the unique situation and objectives of each client, and recommend a range of financial techniques to achieve these clearly defined goals. Depending on the unique situation of a particular client, these techniques may include the following financial techniques and strategies:

Asset Protection Planning
One of the main purposes of asset protection planning is to segregate and insulate liabilities away from valuable assets to the greatest extent allowed by applicable law, so as to reduce the debtor’s profile and amenability to lawsuit, as well as to conduct a lawful “asset freeze” by shifting valuable assets to other family members (in trust or otherwise) at a time when the debtor has no existing or foreseeable claims.
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The Family Limited Partnership (FLP)
Over the past five years, the Family Limited Partnership (FLP) has risen from obscurity as a little known tax loophole into the preeminent vehicle for asset protection and estate planning. A recent article in Forbes extolling the benefits of the FLP — titled "Cut Your Estate Taxes in Half"—claimed that individuals were successfully using this technique to discount the value of their estate by up to 90 percent.
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Limited Liability Company (LLC)
As a business owner, you will be faced with many important decisions, including what business structure to use in your company formation. While many countries allow the typical structures of sole-proprietorship, partnership, or corporation for business ownership, Americans have the ability to form a limited liability company.
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Grantor Retained Annuity Trust (GRAT)
A Grantor Retained Annuity Trust ("GRAT") is one of the estate planning techniques based primarily on interest rate assumptions. Clients create GRATs using assets that are likely to earn more than the Internal Revenue Service's measuring standard (the section 7520 interest rate) during the GRAT term in an effort to pass the appreciation in the assets to the beneficiaries of the trust free of gift and estate tax.
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Qualified Personal Residence Trust (QPRT)
A Qualified Personal Residence Trust (QPRT) is an irrevocable trust created by an individual (donor). A QPRT is funded with the donor’s ownership interest in a personal residence. By using a QPRT, the donor can exclude the full value of the residence from the donor’s estate, and the residence will not be subject to estate tax. The main advantage of the QPRT is that it provides an element of creditor protection. A complex trust can be created which can remove a home from an estate while the client continues to live in the home. This technique can provide considerable estate tax savings.
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Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT)
In most cases, life insurance proceeds pass to the named beneficiary free of any income tax. The payout from a life insurance policy is included in the "gross estate" of the policy owner for estate tax purposes at the policy owner's death and is potentially subject to federal and state estate taxes. At current federal estate tax rate, (37% to 55%) depending on what estate tax rate bracket the decedent policy owner is in, a significant portion of the life insurance proceeds would be payable to the Internal Revenue Service for federal estate tax instead of passing to the policy owner's beneficiaries.
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Intentionally Defective Irrevocable Trusts (IDIT)
In tumultuous economic times, intentionally defective irrevocable trusts (IDITs) offer taxpayers a powerful triple play: an estate-freeze and wealth-transfer technique, as well as an estate planning opportunity—despite terrorism, the market’s vagaries and recent estate tax legislation. An IDIT is an irrevocable trust; it takes advantage of a disparity between the income and estate tax treatments offered certain trusts under IRC sections 674 and 675. Because an IDIT is deemed a grantor trust for income tax purposes, the trust grantor reports the trust’s income annually; however, the trust assets are not includable in the grantor’s estate for estate tax purposes. A grantor can sell appreciating assets to an IDIT in exchange for a note, “freezing” the value of his or her estate and transferring wealth by converting an appreciating asset into a fixed-yield asset (for example, an interest-bearing note).
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Glossary of Estate Planning Terms
A glossary of terms for planned giving, charitable contributions and foundations.
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