Estate Planning-Wealth Planning

How COVID-19 May Impact Your Estate Planning

Published on: May 8, 2020 | By Hart David Carson LLP

With the turmoil caused by the widespread pandemic, it has become paramount for many people to look to the future well-being of their families. While the current situation seems like it may begin clearing up soon, it still poses a challenge for many people, and there’s still plenty of worry to go around.

Making sure your estate plan is up to date is perhaps more important now than ever before, but the way estate planning is handled during this time will have to take current social distancing policies and financial issues into account.

Remote Notarization

Estate Planning Vs. Succession Planning – What’s the Difference?

Published on: April 11, 2020 | By Hart David Carson LLP

Two types of planning that business owners often overlook are estate planning and succession planning. While the two are often lumped together—and in some cases overlap—they are separate processes with their own goals.

Here, we’ll look at how estate and succession planning differ.

Estate Planning

Estate Planning Vs. Succession Planning – What’s the Difference?

Published on: March 4, 2020 | By Hart David Carson LLP

Two types of planning that business owners often overlook are estate planning and succession planning. While the two are often lumped together—and in some cases overlap—they are separate processes with their own goals.

Here, we’ll look at how estate and succession planning differ.

Estate Planning

How to Create a Succession Plan

Published on: February 24, 2020 | By Hart David Carson LLP

When high-level personnel and executives leave your company, it leaves a gap that needs to be filled. To make sure your organization fills those gaps without disrupting your processes, you’ll need a succession plan.

What Is a Succession Plan?

A succession plan is a strategy for making sure key positions are filled when skilled, experienced, or otherwise crucial people leave your organization or otherwise leave positions vacant. It identifies ways to prepare people to fill the gaps left behind.

What Is Succession Planning and Why Is It Important?

Published on: February 18, 2020 | By Hart David Carson LLP

Succession planning is the process of passing on the leadership of a company to others. Often, it involves training employees internally or recruiting qualified individuals from outside the organization.

Definition of Succession Planning

No one is guaranteed to stay with any given company forever. A business’s current executive leaders and owners may retire, move on to other opportunities, or pass away, leaving a void that needs to be filled.

Estate Planning for Farmers

Published on: December 16, 2019 | By Hart David Carson LLP

Farmers tend to be cash poor and asset rich. The worth of your farmland and related assets may exceed estate tax exemption amounts, leading to a hefty tax being assessed on your property once you pass on. Additional complications may further drive up expenses. Often, families find themselves selling land—or even the farm as a whole—to generate cash to cover these expenses.

Preventing that from happening is a key part of your estate plan.

Estate Taxes

What Does an Estate Planning Lawyer Do?

Published on: November 22, 2019 | By Hart David Carson LLP

When planning out how your estate should be handled after you pass on, it’s important to make sure your plans are put together in the most effective, efficient way possible. Estate plans have many moving parts, and the strategies you incorporate into your plan will depend greatly on the nature of your property and assets.

An estate planning lawyer helps with every part of your estate planning process.

Designing Your Overall Estate Plan

Should My Business Create a Captive Insurance Company?

Published on: September 25, 2019 | By Hart David Carson LLP

Insurance can be expensive, and when you need to file a claim, you might find your business at the mercy of your insurance provider. The issues your business might have with insurance could be mitigated by creating a captive insurance company.

What Is Captive Insurance?

Captive insurance is a subsidiary company completely owned by your business and that provides risk mitigation services. In other words, your business creates and owns the company, and that company provides insurance coverage more or less on your terms.

Asset Protection Strategies for 2019

Published on: February 3, 2019 | By Hart David Carson LLP

A new year means new financial changes for many of us, and there may be challenges that come. In order to make sure your wealth is kept as secure as possible in 2019, you’ll want to implement a variety of tried and tested strategies. These will help safeguard your assets while maintaining profitability over the course of the next year.

Set a Goal

One of the first things to do in the new year to safeguard and expand your assets is to create an investment policy statement. This statement simply outlines what your investment goals are for 2019 and what methods you’ll use to achieve them. If you’re not sure where to start, consider talking to an asset protection attorney to determine where your investment portfolio’s weak points are and what you might do to improve your situation.

How to Use Trusts for Asset Protection

Published on: December 12, 2018 | By Hart David Carson LLP

With any degree of wealth comes a certain amount of risk. Even if you aren’t massively wealthy, you still have assets that could come under attack, such as retirement funds, real estate, a small business, and life insurance plans. If you go through a divorce, face a civil lawsuit, declare bankruptcy, or face other scenarios in which creditors may come into play, you need to make sure you have these assets well protected.

One way to safeguard valuable assets is through a trust.

How Does a Trust Work?