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Understanding legacy planning

You may own many types of assets spread over different asset classes. Get your inheritance plans in order with a better understanding of legacy laws and concepts.

Your assets could include properties, securities investments (including equities, funds and securities), bank account deposits, collectibles, life insurance policies, financial assets, and tangible assets (like cars and yachts). As you do your legacy planning, you have to think about:

  1. Separating legacy assets from retirement savings

    Some may think that distributing surplus assets equally among family members is an effective way of passing on wealth to future generations, but in fact, separating the assets to be distributed from your own retirement savings would yield better benefits that include:

    a) Making sure you have adequate retirement savings.
    b) Helping you effectively manage your retirement savings independently without having to worry about spending the assets meant to be passed on.
    c) Letting you use insurance plans as a legacy planning tool to allocate specified funds to chosen family members, and also to help your assets appreciate in value.
  2. Family businesses and asset inheritance

    Today, an increasing number of people are setting up or actively expanding their own businesses. While accumulating wealth, they also hope their children would take over the family business. In reality, however, some children may wish to develop their own careers outside the family business.

    When it's not possible to keep the family business separate from your assets, and when fairly distributing wealth to future generations becomes difficult, life insurance plans could help to a certain extent. Such policies could aid in increasing your liquid assets, enabling you to choose how to distribute your assets, and provide an insured amount to your beneficiaries in case they need urgent funds.

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