Comprehensive Estate Planning and Trust Services
Our wealth managers collaborate with a team of in-house attorneys who draft custom trust and estate planning documents to help protect your family’s future, secure what you’ve built and ensure your wishes are honored. Our personalized estate plans are designed to not only safeguard your wealth but also provide lasting peace of mind.
Why Estate Planning Matters
Thoughtful estate planning services do more than divide assets — they create a legacy to protect and support your loved ones. A well-designed plan helps ensure your wishes are fulfilled, minimizes estate taxes and maintains your family’s privacy. When you align your estate plan with private wealth management and legacy planning, you can protect your wealth now while preparing future generations to thrive.
Supporting Your Estate Planning Goals
Protect Assets
Manage Division of Assets
Avoid Probate
Maintain Privacy
Save Taxes
Pass Along More Wealth
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK
Our Comprehensive Estate Planning Services
If you’re like many of our clients, it’s not enough to simply grow your assets. You also want to make sure those assets are available following your death to support your loved ones and the causes most important to you. We’re here to help ensure your estate planning goals are carried out according to your wishes.
Once our estate planning specialists understand your specific goals, they'll work with you to identify the right combination of documents to properly protect your assets and provide financial well-being for your loved ones.
Your will is the foundation of your estate plan. It provides guidance about your wishes, including the appointment of guardians for minor children and clarity surrounding your assets’ distribution. We help minimize disputes and honor your legacy according to your intentions by following up with updates as your needs change.
If your estate includes residential property, investment holdings or commercial real estate, our team can also structure your estate plan to optimize real estate transfers in a tax-efficient manner and maximize asset protection benefits.
Having the right powers of attorney helps to ensure a trusted individual can act on your behalf when you can’t make decisions. We assist with financial powers of attorney to manage accounts and property, healthcare powers of attorney for medical decision guidance and durable powers of attorney that remain effective if you become incapacitated.
We also guide you in creating advance directives and healthcare proxies to help ensure your preferences for medical care are respected during critical times.
Trusts provide a flexible, efficient way to manage assets during your lifetime and beyond. Establishing a revocable living trust for asset management or creating an irrevocable trust for tax or charitable purposes is simplified when our estate planning attorneys guide you through the process.
We also offer ongoing trust administration services that help ensure compliance and manage distributions. Creative Planning tailors trust structures to your needs, providing vital clarity for wealth transfer while protecting assets from probate challenges and unnecessary estate taxes.
Clients with more complex estates sometimes require advanced strategies. These can help maximize the preservation of wealth and help minimize tax exposure. Strategies may include gifting techniques, charitable remainder trusts, family limited partnerships or multi-generational wealth transfer plans.
For business owners, we incorporate business succession planning into your estate plan to protect leadership continuity and help maximize enterprise value for future generations.
Future Wealth Planning Strategies
As you plan for the future, Creative Planning can help you implement advanced tactics for protecting your assets and minimizing your tax burden, all with an eye on creating opportunities for future generations. Get forward-looking solutions to help support your family’s long-term financial well-being that reflect your values and goals.
Generational wealth transfer planning
The right wealth transfer plan can help ensure your assets are passed to heirs smoothly and according to your wishes. Creative Planning’s team works with you to design customized strategies unique to your needs. Help reduce estate taxes and avoid probate challenges as you protect your beneficiaries from unnecessary financial risks.
Tax-efficient wealth preservation
Minimizing your tax exposure can help preserve your wealth for the future. We develop strategies that align your investments, trusts and estate plan with strategic tax planning techniques. These efforts can include Roth conversions, charitable remainder trusts or asset location strategies that help reduce liabilities and support your goals. This proactive approach can help preserve your wealth, benefitting your family today and tomorrow.
Multi-generational trust strategies
Trusts can serve as powerful tools to help sustain wealth across multiple generations. We help clients establish structures like dynasty trusts and generation-skipping trusts that are designed to reduce estate taxes while protecting assets over time. These trusts also create guardrails for responsible stewardship of family wealth. Our specialists tailor each trust strategy to your long-term vision, providing much-needed clarity and security that builds a strong foundation for your family’s financial plan.
Estate Planning for Every Stage of Life
Life changes bring new responsibilities, and your estate plan should evolve with them. Our estate planning services support you through all life’s milestones. Whether you’re navigating marriage, parenthood, retirement or another financial shift, we help ensure your family trust planning services remain up to date, incorporating strategies like charitable giving to reflect your values. Doing so results in a dynamic plan to protect your family’s future (and legacy) for generations.
Young professionals and new families
You want the best for your family, so help ensure they’re protected with our estate planning services. We can help with creating a will as well as any plans for your children, including establishing trusts.
Mid-career wealth accumulation
As you’ve worked to consistently grow your wealth throughout your career, you should make sure it’s protected by setting up a tax-efficient strategy through estate planning. We can support you in preserving your wealth in a variety of ways.
Pre-retirement planning
It’s never too soon to begin your retirement planning. Get your estate plan and trust services established early. With estate plans, power of attorney services and multi-generational trusts, you can head into retirement with peace of mind knowing your assets and wishes are protected.
Why Families Choose Creative Planning
When it comes to protecting your legacy, experience matters. At Creative Planning, our estate planning services fully integrate with our tax, legal and investment strategies. This process helps ensure every decision supports your long-term goals. Whether we’re drafting your will, fine-tuning your charitable giving strategy or providing you with complex family trust planning services, we simplify the process while safeguarding what you’ve built. Clients choose us because of how seamlessly our estate planning services integrate with their comprehensive financial plan, and because we act as fiduciaries, providing independent guidance that aligns with their best interests at every stage of life.
Our Estate Planning Process
Estate planning may seem complex, but the right guidance can make it a clear, empowering process. At Creative Planning, we partner with individuals and families at every stage to help protect their wealth and provide security for an enduring legacy. Our proven process builds a plan that reflects your unique goals and has the flexibility to evolve with your life.
Step 1: Initial consultation and goal setting
We start with a discussion to understand your values, priorities and financial situation. During this consultation, our advisors identify key objectives, from protecting loved ones to charitable giving, and outline a framework tailored to your vision for the future.
Step 2: Document drafting and review
Our estate attorneys prepare customized documents like trusts, wills and powers of attorney. We then give you a set of documents that serves as an estate plan to align with your goals and meet the needs of you and your family.
Step 3: Implementation and ongoing support
Once finalized, we’ll guide you through estate plan execution, coordinating with any other professionals as needed. Our teams provide the legwork to help you get your assets titled properly. Further, because estate planning isn’t a one-time task, our team offers ongoing support to adjust documents as laws or your life circumstances change.
Frequently Asked Questions About Estate Planning
Integrate Your Wealth Management With Estate Planning
Connect with a Creative Planning wealth manager today to learn how our estate planning services can be integrated into your wealth management strategy to help safeguard wealth, provide for loved ones and ensure your wishes are confidently carried out.
Recommended Reading
The Great Wealth Transfer: Estate Planning Essentials for Multi-Generational Families
Learn how to prepare for the Great Wealth Transfer with multi generational estate planning strategies, trusts and family governance designed to protect wealth and values.
How to Leave Your Mark in 5 Steps: Building a Lasting Financial Legacy
Learn five practical steps to build a lasting financial legacy, protect generational wealth and align your estate plan with your family’s values.
How Dynasty Trusts Help Preserve Wealth
Learn how a dynasty trust can help support multigenerational wealth preservation.
