INDIVIDUAL SERVICES

Trust & Estate Planning Services

With a focus on reducing estate taxes, protecting assets, and ensuring a smooth transfer of wealth, Evans Sternau CPA develops customized strategies that reflect your complex financial needs.

Key Reasons Trust & Estate Planning is Important

Trust and estate planning is crucial, and working with a CPA at Evans Sternau CPA can provide several benefits. Engaging a CPA in your trust and estate planning can lead to a more strategic, informed, and effective plan that benefits you and your beneficiaries.

How We Can Help

Charitable Remainder Trust

By leveraging the expertise of a CPA, individuals can maximize the benefits of a Charitable Remainder Trust (CRT), making it a powerful tool for both personal financial management and charitable giving. They are increasingly common for individuals to have due to:

Various Tax Benefits
Philanthropic Goals
Estate Planning

CPAs have a deep understanding of tax laws and regulations, ensuring that the CRT is structured in a way that maximizes tax benefits while complying with legal requirements. They also can integrate the CRT into your overall financial strategy, considering your income needs, tax implications, and estate planning goals.

Revocable Trust

A revocable trust is a flexible estate planning tool that can offer numerous benefits for individuals. Here are key reasons why establishing a revocable trust is important:

Control Over Assets
Privacy
Simplifies Estate Administration

A revocable trust can work in conjunction with other estate planning documents, like wills and powers of attorney, providing a comprehensive plan for managing your assets. By engaging a CPA to help establish and manage a revocable trust, individuals can ensure that their estate planning is thorough, efficient, and aligned with their financial and personal goals.

Charitable Remainder Trust
A charitable remainder trust (CRT) is an estate planning tool that benefits both the donor and charitable organizations. It involves transferring assets into an irrevocable trust, generating income for the donor or their beneficiaries during a set period. After this timeframe, the remaining assets are distributed to designated charities. CRTs offer immediate tax benefits, as the donor receives a charitable deduction for the estimated future donation. This strategic arrangement provides income for the donor's lifetime or a specified period, supports philanthropic causes, and can potentially reduce estate taxes, making it a powerful instrument for achieving financial and charitable goals.

Revocable Trust
Tax planning for revocable trusts, also known as living trusts, involves structuring the trust to efficiently manage and potentially minimize estate taxes and income taxes. While revocable trusts do not provide immediate tax benefits, they offer the advantage of avoiding probate, potentially simplifying estate administration. Effective tax planning within revocable trusts may include provisions to minimize capital gains taxes upon asset transfer or incorporating strategies to maximize the use of estate tax exemptions. It's essential to consider the interplay of trust provisions, individual circumstances, and changing tax laws to create a plan that aligns with the goals of preserving wealth and reducing tax liabilities.

Charitable Lead Trust
A charitable lead trust (CLT) is a estate planning mechanism that supports both philanthropy and wealth transfer. By placing assets into an irrevocable trust, donors enable a designated charity to receive annual payments for a specified period. Afterward, any remaining assets are passed to beneficiaries, often family members, with potential estate and gift tax benefits. CLTs provide a way to make a positive impact during the donor's lifetime, while also facilitating the efficient transfer of assets to heirs with reduced tax implications. This arrangement combines charitable giving with legacy planning, offering a unique approach to managing wealth and supporting charitable causes.

Sales To Grantor Trusts
A sale to a grantor trust is a financial transaction in which an individual (the grantor) sells assets, such as real estate or investments, to an irrevocable trust in which they are considered the grantor for tax purposes. The trust is designed to be disregarded for income tax purposes, meaning the grantor is still personally responsible for the income and taxes generated by the trust's assets. This technique can be used as part of estate planning to transfer assets to heirs while utilizing the grantor's lifetime gift tax exemption and retaining some control over the assets.

Distribution Provisions
Review distribution provisions; principal and income. To review the distribution provisions of a trust, carefully examine the trust document, paying attention to the language that outlines how and when distributions can be made to beneficiaries. Identify the criteria that must be met for a distribution to occur, such as specific events, ages, or conditions. If you have questions or need clarification, consult with an attorney or trust professional who can provide guidance on the trust's distribution provisions and help ensure that the trust operates in accordance with the grantor's wishes and applicable laws.

Gift Trusts
Tax planning for gift trusts involves creating and managing trusts to optimize the gifting of assets while minimizing gift and estate taxes. These trusts, like Crummey trusts or irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs), allow individuals to transfer assets to beneficiaries while retaining some level of control. By properly structuring these trusts and adhering to gifting rules, individuals can potentially remove assets from their taxable estate, utilize annual gift tax exclusions, and maximize the benefits of the lifetime estate and gift tax exemptions. Gift trusts demand careful consideration of tax implications, trust terms, and individual objectives to create an effective tax-efficient gifting strategy.

Distribution 65 Days
A 65-day distribution refers to the option for an estate or trust to make a distribution within the first 65 days of the following tax year while still attributing it to the prior tax year. To utilize this option, you should assess the trust or estate's financial situation and determine the optimal timing for the distribution. Ensure that you file the necessary tax forms, such as Schedule K-1 or Form 1041, to report the distribution and its attribution to the prior year's tax return. Consulting with a tax professional or attorney experienced in estate and trust taxation is advisable to navigate the process effectively and remain in compliance with tax regulations.

Gift Stock to Children For Tuition
Gifting stock to children involves transferring ownership of shares or securities from a parent or guardian to their children. This can have tax implications, as any capital gains on the stock may be subject to capital gains tax when the children eventually sell the stock. However, gifting stock can be a tax-efficient way to transfer wealth, especially if the children are in a lower tax bracket, as they may pay a lower capital gains tax rate compared to the parent.

More About Evans Sternau CPA

Our core values are proactiveness, responsiveness, and support – they help us ensure that we continue to serve each and every one of our clients to the highest level possible

Proactiveness: Tax, accounting, and advisory isn’t just about solving problems when they arise – Evans Sternau CPA implements better solutions and performs routine checks year-round.
Responsiveness: Keeping all parties informed, always, means everyone is operating with full awareness and to the fullest extent.
Support: Whatever your tax, advisory, and accounting needs are, Evans Sternau CPA guarantees that we make each and every one of our clients feel supported when they work with us.

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