Editor’s note: This is part 16 — and the final article — of a series about the fundamental principles of using trusts and LLCs in estate planning, asset protection and tax planning. The effectiveness of these powerful tools — especially for asset protection and tax planning — depends very much on how they are configured to work together and whether certain types of control over assets and property are surrendered by the property owner. See below for links to the other articles in the series.
When facing estate planning decisions, it can be tempting to search for one product — perhaps a trust or LLC package — to address all of the needs. However, this product based approach to fails to balance the multiple variables that stand in trade-off with one another such as income tax vs transfer tax or control and flexibility vs asset protection.
