Estate and Wealth Protection

The need for tax-smart estate plan, has never been greater. With the massive baby boomer generation inheriting trillions of over the coming decades, and taxes on those inheritances likely to remain high. Here's some tips for creating your tax-smart estate plan. First of all, make sure your will is up to date, especially if there have been important changes in your life. Your will names your beneficiaries and your executor. Consider having an open discussion with your family, you may feel uncomfortable about doing this. But it can help your family understand your intentions, and what they might need to do. One of the things you may want to discuss with your family is your choice of executor.

It's an honor to be named an executor, but there are a lot of responsibilities. Make sure your chosen executor is comfortable with what they will have to do. And remember, you don't have to choose a family member. Especially if you have a complicated estate, it may make more sense to choose a professional executor. You may also want to discuss taking care of certain family members. Perhaps you have younger children or grandchildren that you want to provide for. You can leave them a bequest through a testamentary trust in your will, or you can create a family trust during your lifetime. Trusts have important tax advantages when they are properly structured. Let's assume your beneficiaries have no other income. For example, a minor child, they can earn about $10,000 of interest income tax free, every year on the assets you transfer into the trust.

Here's another way you can reduce the impact of taxes on your estate, with life insurance. Consider this, if you leave $300,000 in your RSP or riff when you pass away. Your estate may have to pay as much as nearly half of that in tax, that's nearly $150,000. Similarly, your estate may have to pay taxes on any capital gains on things like your investments, your cottage, and US property. With a life insurance policy, you can cover these taxes. It can be very cost effective because the insurance premiums are often just a fraction of the tax bill. As always, with insurance, it's most cost effective when you're younger and in good health. One last tip for creating a tax-smart estate, and it's important. Make sure you speak with a qualified legal professional first, before you put any estate planning strategies in place.

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When you talk about legacy, I don't think that it's just after you're gone, what have you left? I think it's how you've lived your life the whole time.

The legacy that I'm the most interested in leaving is the one about having been responsible for what I was given, and doing the best job of making sure that those resources have been used in the best and most efficient and most effective and most impactful way. A part of that part is making sure that we're working with our sons to educate them, and get them ready to take over that part of that legacy.

My role has always been not only to manage their investments, but be a guide, help navigate through many financial choices they have. To do that successfully, it is important for me to be very knowledgeable about who they are, their family histories, their goals, their wishes, and their values. You need a plan that includes insurance, estate planning, business succession, charitable giving. You need other experts to contribute. And that is the role that Arnie, Jamie, and others play.

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As anybody who has children, you want to make sure that you're giving them the best values you can, especially with the responsibility and the challenges that come with large amounts of wealth.

We have tried as best as we can to be intentional parents in all aspects. Life is busy, and sometimes we've been less intentional than others. But in this area, we're trying our best to instill in them some responsibility with money.

We want to think about how we're living our lives now, and what we're being involved in, and the causes that we're supporting.

They're getting to the stage where they're making plans for what they're going to do after high school is over. And so we're working through how to make sure they remain motivated. So that's a bit of a challenge to thread that needle. And so that's something that I'm sure we'll be looking to Harp to give us some insights on as well. It's worth mentioning that Harp has brought us several resources over the years regarding training our boys with becoming good stewards of money.

I think actually when your kids are teenagers, they quite often prefer having other people than their parents give them advice and information. So it's a very good time for us to be bringing people into their lives who can give them advice and to just share some wisdom.

And it changes over time. In a 15-year-old, in a 17-year-old, there's different planning that needs to take place at that stage versus when they're getting involved in relationships. There is another type of planning that you want to look out for, so it's an evolving piece. It isn't just doing and going through a planning process, and now we're done.

So even if tomorrow morning, all is taken away, I'm confident that they'll have learned principles that would help them to avoid problems later in life, just because they've hung around and seen the advice that we've been able to get over these years.

RBC Wealth Management is Canada's leading wealth manager. Our approach brings the best of RBC to you. Our resources, solutions, and full access to our team of experts, through one single contact, your wealth manager. Simply put, there's wealth in our approach.