At Schwartz Montoya Legal, we take a comprehensive and collaborative approach to estate and retirement planning. Through detailed discussions, we learn about your planning situation and focus both on planning opportunities while you are alive and the distribution of your assets after your death.
We address lifetime planning opportunities to pass wealth to your family, whether to your children to help them maximize their own savings and/or to your grandchildren to help fund education. We also discuss strategic methods to withdraw money from your IRAs and/or to convert your traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs particularly during the years between retirement and when you have to withdraw required minimum distributions.
We will plan for your legacy, reviewing your assets and discussing how they will be distributed to your beneficiaries. The three primary distribution options are joint ownership, beneficiary designations, and Wills/Trusts. Since beneficiary designations supersede your Will/Trust, it is important to understand how all of your assets will be distributed.
In considering both lifetime and post-death planning, we will discuss your beneficiaries’ priorities and their tax planning considerations to enable us to give thoughtful recommendations regarding how to strategically distribute your assets among your beneficiaries. For many of our clients with significant retirement assets and/or assets in other states, it is beneficial to consider Living or Revocable Trusts as part of the estate plan to accelerate distribution of these assets and to incorporate sophisticated planning tools such as charitable trusts, lifetime trusts for beneficiaries, or trusts that distribute assets in stages in a way that will be accepted by retirement account custodians.
At Schwartz Montoya Legal, our goal is to tailor our planning solutions to each client’s needs to help them accomplish their goals. We are grateful for the opportunity to use our expertise and collaborate with our clients to develop personalized retirement and estate plans.