Estate Planning
Estate planning isn’t about death. It’s about direction. It’s about making decisions now that protect your family, preserve your wealth, and keep your legacy from being defined by courts, taxes, or conflict. At Cinder Wealth, we help business owners use their time wisely so they have options, not just obligations.
Estate Tax Strategies
Most business owners already have some form of estate plan. A will. A trust. Old documents sitting in a binder somewhere. The problem is usually not that nothing exists. It is that the business has evolved, the family situation has changed, wealth has grown, and nobody has stepped back to make sure everything still works together. Beneficiaries, trusts, business ownership, retirement accounts, insurance, tax strategy, and succession planning often end up moving in different directions over time. We help business owners bring coordination and clarity to that process. That includes helping put foundational estate documents in place, working alongside estate planning attorneys when more advanced trust planning is needed, and making sure the broader financial, tax, and family strategy stays aligned as life changes. The goal is not just having documents signed. The goal is making sure your family, your business, and the wealth you built are protected and intentionally structured for the long term.
Trust Planning and Wealth Transfer
Estate planning for business owners is rarely just about documents. Once a business, family, and meaningful assets are involved, the bigger challenge is making sure ownership, trusts, beneficiaries, taxes, and long-term family goals are all coordinated properly over time. We use advanced trust strategies like GRATs, SLATs, and IDGTs to help clients transfer wealth during their lifetime without triggering gift or estate taxes. One strategy we often use with business owners is setting up a trust and selling assets to it in exchange for a promissory note. This removes future appreciation from your estate, and if structured properly through an intentionally defective grantor trust, the sale doesn’t trigger capital gains. If you need liquidity, you can borrow funds back from the trust. The interest payments flow within your planning structure and provide tax-efficient access to capital.
We also use lifetime gifting to move wealth out of your estate tax-free. You and your spouse could each gift $18,000 to someone and each of you could also gift $18,000 to their spouse. That’s $72,000 per year moving out of your estate without touching your lifetime exemption.
Multi-Generational Planning
At Cinder Wealth, we use a Vision and Values Workshop with every planning client. It’s a foundational step that helps uncover what matters most to your family beyond just the numbers. Through guided questions around family, business, philanthropy, and life experience, we help clients articulate the virtues they want to pass down, not just the valuables. This gives us clear guidance to align your estate and financial plans with your actual values and equips you to share and teach those values to the next generation.
The goal isn’t just to avoid taxes. It’s to preserve what you’ve built for the people and causes you care about.
A well-structured estate plan means that regardless of what happens with the business, your family has a clear, protected path forward.
Is your estate plan protecting your family and your business, or are you hoping it all just works out?
Ready to stop overpaying taxes and start building a real exit plan?
Let’s coordinate your financial team and protect what you’ve built.
