Posts tagged with planning structures

Trusts for the trusted

Trusts are often used by parents to protect and preserve assets for beneficiaries who otherwise might not manage them well, but a trust can be valuable for sensible self supporting children too.

The natural advantage of enterprising families

Every enterprising family is different but they all face a common challenge; how to balance the competing demands for resources.

Passing the baton – the next generation

Transfers of business interests to the next generation create all sorts of thorny issues, but one of the very thorniest is money.

Avoiding unnecessary complexity

Over the years, I have seen clients become almost mesmerized by the intricate features of complex planning structures – multiple trusts, holding companies, interlocking entities, tiered partnerships, freeze or preferred return structures.

Who owns the assets in a trust? Most families who create a trust assume that “the family” or perhaps “the beneficiaries” own the assets, but in fact the trustee is the legal owner under common law.

As I begin the third post in this series on business succession planning, let me first say that I bring to the subject both personal experience and some ambivalence.

How do you protect a unique family asset if your goal is to ensure that it remains in the family over generations?

For the next few posts I’m going to shift the focus away from business succession planning and toward the more general topic of multi-generational planning.