Estate Planning
Our Client's
We help successful entrepreneurs, professionals and their families grow, protect and transfer wealth in the most effective manner.
How We Help You
We facilitate the design and implementation of your comprehensive estate plan in a collaborative approach with your current advisory team to help maximize wealth and minimize tax.
A Success Story
Read this case study about how we helped a client transfer their family business equally to all children, when only some were involved in the business.
Our client's are diverse and include successful entrepreneurs, professionals and their families.
They share a set of expectations: simplicity and collaboration in the approach, sophisticated customized solutions on par with those available out of Calgary, Vancouver or Toronto and the pleasure of working with a local firm that has integrity, tradition, discretion and absolute trust.
Our clients also want to work with true professionals and establish long-term relationships. They seek advice geared to meeting their changing circumstances as their lives and situations evolve.
We work with clients directly and in partnership with their entire advisory team.
We offer a unique, collaborative approach to help our client's preserve what they've spent a lifetime building.
Our unique approach will help simplify complex planning issues, and provide innovative solutions that efficiently meet current needs while keeping future objectives in mind. We support our client's and their families in designing creative solutions that enable them to avoid having to surrender good assets only to pay more tax than they need to.
Challenge
Our client came to us looking for advice regarding his family business which he and his spouse currently own 50/50. They have four children, two that are involved in the family business and two that are not. They are both 55 years old and are looking to retire by 65.
The family would like to be able to:
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Retire by age 65
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Transfer or gift shares of the family business to the two children that are involved
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Treat the two children that are not involved in the business fairly
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Make sure he and his spouse have a health trust set up, so as not to be a burden on their children in the future
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Set up an education trust fund for their grandchildren
Solution
We met with the client and his spouse to discuss possible solutions to solve their challenges. After meeting with our Tax and Estate Planning Group we established a few options which we presented to the family and their other advisors.
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Do an immediate estate freeze for the shares held by the husband and wife in the business.
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Give the husband and wife preferred shares that hold the voting rights and thus control the business. Issue new common shares to be owned by the two children that are involved in the business. This gives the client the options to transfer all or partial future growth of the company to the children.
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Create a family trust which will own the preferred and common shares.
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The business will buy life insurance policies on both the husband and his spouse for the value of their shares plus any tax that will be due on the preferred frozen shares.
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We helped redesign the USA (Buy/Sell) Agreement to coordinate with the client’s future wishes regarding the redemption of shares, death, or disability.
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We helped the client redesign their Will, to ensure that the two children not involved in the business will be taken care of fairly.
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We helped set up an Education Trust Fund for the grandchildren.
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We helped set up a Health Trust Fund that can be used if either the husband or his spouse needs long-term care.
Results
The client has since passed away and his corporate life insurance policies were paid into the corporation upon his death. The proceeds helped fund the USA and provided cash for his spouse for retirement. A portion of the proceeds were payable to the two children who were not involved in the business and also left cash for both the Education and Health Trust Funds.
With the sharing of ideas and the proper estate planning advice we were able to satisfy and fulfill our client’s long-term needs.
To find out more about how we can help you achieve your objectives send us a quick email below or give us a call at 403-329-6220.
