The Power of a Team: Why Estate Planning Requires a Collaborative Approach - Trusts & Estates and Elder Law Newsletter
By: Alec R. Borenstein
When it comes to managing wealth and securing your legacy, estate planning is not a solo endeavor. The complexity of today's financial landscape, combined with evolving tax laws and family dynamics, makes it critical to approach estate planning holistically with a team of trusted professionals. Cultivating a collaborative group of advisors—including an estate planning attorney, financial advisor, and accountant—is essential to creating and maintaining an estate plan that is comprehensive, tax-efficient, and aligned with a person’s long-term goals.
Estate Planning Attorneys: The Legal Architects
The estate planning attorney acts as the architect of your planning, drafting the foundational documents such as wills, revocable and irrevocable trusts, powers of attorney, and healthcare directives. More importantly, an experienced attorney will help structure an estate plan to reflect the client’s values and family needs, while ensuring compliance with both state and federal law.
In today’s world, estate planning is about more than just distributing assets after death. A skilled attorney will help clients anticipate and navigate issues like planning for disability, blended families, business succession, special needs planning, charitable giving, and asset protection. But legal documents are just one piece of the puzzle. Without coordination with financial and tax professionals, even the most well-drafted plan can fail to achieve its intended results.
Financial Advisors: The Strategic Planners
For many of our clients, the quarterback of the process is often the financial advisor. A good financial advisor brings a practical, forward-looking lens to the estate planning process. The advisor’s role is to understand the client’s financial picture in its entirety—retirement savings, investment accounts, insurance policies, real estate, and business interests—and help structure assets in a way that supports lifetime needs while preparing for an efficient transfer to the next generation.
For example, a financial advisor might help determine the right type and amount of life insurance to fund an irrevocable life insurance trust (ILIT), identify underperforming assets that could be gifted to reduce estate tax exposure, or project how much liquidity will be needed to cover estate taxes upon death. This kind of financial modeling is critical to ensure the estate plan remains viable not just on paper, but in real life. Your financial advisor and attorney should also coordinate their efforts to ensure that your wishes are reflected in any beneficiary designations you may have in place. You want to be sure that your attorneys and advisors work hand-in-hand to put you and your family in the best financial situation throughout your life and especially upon death.
Accountants: The Tax Strategists
Estate plans, financial plans, and taxes are intertwined. That’s where accountants come in. An accountant’s expertise is indispensable when it comes to minimizing estate, gift, income, and generation-skipping transfer (GST) taxes. They provide insights on valuation issues, income tax minefields, and the tax impact of charitable giving strategies, business transfers, and trust income.
An accountant also helps ensure that estate planning strategies are properly implemented and maintained over time. For example, they might help prepare gift tax returns, track annual exclusion gifts, or advise on how to fund a grantor trust in a tax-efficient manner. Their ongoing involvement helps prevent mistakes that could lead to penalties or undermine the integrity of the estate plan.
A Team-Based Approach: Greater than the Sum of Its Parts
Each of the advisors described above brings unique expertise, but the real magic happens when they work together. Estate planning decisions often have legal, financial, and tax implications that are intertwined. For instance, the decision to recapitalize your company into an irrevocable trust to save estate taxes may involve legal structuring by the attorney, valuation input from the accountant, and guidance from the financial advisor on how assets should be invested within the trust for maximum estate and income tax efficiency, control, and cash flow.
Without a coordinated effort, professionals may give conflicting advice, or worse, miss opportunities altogether. A strong team not only helps avoid these pitfalls but also ensures that each strategy is well-integrated and tailored to the client’s specific circumstances and goals.
The trusts and estates attorneys at Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C. are committed to working with your financial and tax professionals to make sure you and your family are protected for many years to come. Our estate planning attorneys know that when we work with your financial advisors and accountants intentionally, you benefit from a cohesive, forward-thinking estate plan that protects what matters most: your wealth, your family, and your legacy. Send us an email if you would like to learn more about our collaborative advisory approach to your estate planning.
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The information contained herein is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem. Use of and access to these materials do not create an attorney-client relationship between Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C. and/or its attorneys, and the reader of the materials.
