Proper legacy planning can be the key to a successful retirement plan and helps to ensure that your wishes and loved ones are taken care of. The multifaceted process of legacy planning can serve a wide array of purposes, from helping to preserve your assets for future use to transferring your wealth.
Comprehensive legacy planning helps to ensure that your assets will be under your control during life and may provide a variety of benefits to you and your family. When they are executed and implemented properly, legacy plans may help reduce family disputes and court bureaucracy, provide effective disability planning, appropriately utilize exemptions to minimize estate taxes, and provide certain asset protection benefits to beneficiaries.
There are many strategies and tools that can be utilized to help protect your wealth and make sure it is effectively transferred. A variety of legal documents, such as wills, revocable living trusts, Powers of Attorney, and advanced medical documents, are beneficial to the legacy planning process. Life insurance, both term and permanent insurance, is another valuable tool to consider because it can be designed to serve several different functions. Life insurance policies can help address the financial harm caused by the unexpected sudden deaths of parents of minor children, help minimize the wealth destruction of families who may need advanced estate tax optimization, or possibly even work as alternative savings or wealth generation tools.
Additionally, long-term care insurance helps protect your assets from the devastating costs of long-term care expenses and provides the opportunity to address housing during the last stages of your life. These policies offer a diverse range of coverage depending on the style you choose, from more traditional policies to unique, hybrid approaches that can generate enhanced long-term care benefits within certain types of life insurance or variable and fixed indexed annuity* contracts.
Finally, elder law planning can help limit the potentially devastating effects that long-term disabilities may have on your quality of life, finances, and legacy.
*Annuity guarantees, including optional riders, are backed solely by the financial strength and claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. Early withdrawals may impact annuity cash values and death benefits. Taxes are payable upon withdrawal of funds. An additional 10% IRS penalty may apply to withdrawals prior to age 59 ½.
