For Medical Professionals

Owners of medical practices have a unique set of challenges when it comes to asset protection.  

You work hard to have a medical practice that provides for your family.   Doctors and owners of other medical practices should have legal strategies in place to maximize that security for their family.  Having asset protection, business succession planning, general estate planning and/or advanced estate planning in place gives the medical business owner peace of mind that they are actively pursuing approprirate legal strategies to maximize the protection of their personal assets, like the family home, etc.

Some business owners (from every field) wait until it's too late--when something has occurred that puts them at risk for a hefty liability.  Then they want all the strategies in place, but at that point it may be too late.  

Don't put off legal strategies today that may be absolutely necessary to have in place tomorrow.  Many strategies will not be effective if you have waited until it is too late.

Our firm can assist you with such sophisticated planning strategies as Family Limited Partnerships or Limited Liability Companies, Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts and a wide range of other techniques techniques to maximize the protection of your personal assets.. 

Family Limited Partnerships
A Family Limited Partnership (FLP) is a form of a limited partnership among members of a family. The main advantages of forming and funding an FLP involve estate and gift tax savings and asset protection. An FLP also allows you to retain control over the transferred assets while enjoying these advantages.

Once the FLP is established and your assets are transferred to it, you can make gifts of limited partnership interests to your children or other beneficiaries. This accomplishes several different estate planning objectives simultaneously. 

Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts
There is a common misconception that life insurance proceeds are not subject to Federal Estate Taxes.  While the proceeds are received by your loved ones free of any income taxes, they are countable as part of your taxable estate and therefore your loved ones can lose about half of its value to estate taxes if the policy is large enough, and when considering other assets of your estate. 

An Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust is created specifically for the purpose of owning your life insurance policy. A properly established and administered trust holds the policy outside of your estate and keeps the proceeds from being taxable to your estate. The proceeds from the insurance policy can then be used to provide your estate with the liquidity to pay estate taxes, pay off debts, pay final expenses and provide income to a surviving spouse or children.  The ILIT will be the policy owner and beneficiary.  Once your trust is established, you use your annual gift tax exclusion to make cash gifts to your trust. Your beneficiaries forgo the present gift (in lieu of the future proceeds) and the trustee uses the remaining gift to pay the premium on the life insurance policy.

There are many options available when setting up an ILIT.  For example, ILITs can be structured to provide income to a surviving spouse with the remainder going to your children from a previous marriage.  You can also provide for distribution of a limited amount of the insurance proceeds over a period of time to a financially irresponsible child.

Our firm is dedicated to helping clients make educated, informed decisions about their assets and will work with you and your team of financial advisors and CPAs to implement a highly sophisticated estate plan.   If applicable we also have financial advisors and CPAs that we recommend, and that allows us to integrate and put plans in place that other professionals will understand from the beginning of implementation.

To schedule a no charge initial consultation, please contact us.