Considering that the results of the recent elections have thrown the repeal of the estate tax into even further jeopardy, the need for proper estate planning is more urgent than ever.
As advisors, it is our job to make sure that our clients' estates are properly positioned. While clients may avoid estate planning for fear of making irrevocable decisions, setting themselves up to run out of money, or negatively impacting their beneficiaries, we cannot allow emotional barriers to stand in the way of doing what is in our clients' best interests.
Quantify how much money clients need to live the lives that they want to live and help them identify the "extra money" that they have. There are planning techniques that allow clients to retain a high level of control over their money while removing a significant portion from their taxable estate. Finally, remind clients that with huge deficits and a lack of political momentum, an estate planning repeal is certainly not on the short-term horizon, thus making this the time to plan.
Marc Lewyn,
Investment Advisor Representative
GV Financial Advisors
Atlanta, Georgia
An SMA Headstand
I very much enjoyed reading Savita Iyer's article ("Stepping Into the Great Wide Open, October 2006) on financial institutions seeking the right balance in their open architecture offerings.
Today's traditional SMA structure is expensive because it requires supporting a complex infrastructure to support account opening, account closing, account rebalancing, and special customization/tax requests. It is also relatively uncustomized because each outside manager only has knowledge of his or her own portion of the end investor's portfolio–which makes it difficult to provide holistic tax and risk management.
