Rental income is a powerful way to build wealth. What will happen to all you have built if you were to become incapacitated, chose to resign, or died? Your estate plan will allow you to maintain control and avoid expensive chaos.
You handle the details of your business in your own way, and you likely think about your business all the time. As owners of our fiduciary firm, we think the way most entrepreneurs do; our business is our baby, and every detail is important.
Over the years, and with so much experience learned in every trust administration, we have developed a robust succession plan. Here are some questions for you to explore with your estate planning attorney, so that you, too, can have confidence in your future:
What matters most to you about your business? Is it interaction with the tenants? Is it knowing you are providing a safe place to live or conduct business? Are you excited that your descendants will also enjoy the income you are creating?
What are your greatest challenges? What do you want your successors to know, so that they will be successful in managing what you have built?
How do you want to be remembered by your family? By your tenants? By your colleagues?
Many of our wealthy clients consider themselves to be stewards of the future, and have planned not only what will be inherited by family, but also what will be left to charity, when the time comes. What causes are you most passionate about?
Marguerite Lorenz, CTFA, CLPF is a Master Trustee and a Managing Partner at Lorenz Private Trustees (MyTrustee.net) and has served as a Trustee and Executor since 2003.