Estate and Legacy Planning
Leave an enduring legacy for the people, causes and organizations you love
From traditional estate planning to
values based estate planning
As Lynne Twist, author and founder of the Soul of Money Institute explained, money carries our intention. If we use it with integrity, then it carries integrity forward.
We believe that estate planning should go beyond the traditional considerations of tax minimization, inheritance, wealth transfer and asset protection. We use a value based estate planning approach that matches your why: the impact and meaning that you desire for your wealth, with the how: the strategies, tools and techniques that will help you achieve those goals.
Some of the tools we regularly use for estate planning, beyond the traditional estate documents, include Living Trusts, Intentionally Defective Grantor Trusts, Spousal Lifetime Asset Trusts, Special Needs Trusts, Donor Advised Funds, Qualified Charitable Distributions, Gift Annuities, Retained Life Estates, Charitable Remainder Trusts and Charitable Lead Trusts.
Our retirement planning services include helping you:
- Define your family’s core values and communicate them in a meaningful form to your loved ones and estate planning team.
- Construct the framework of your estate plan around US and Swiss estate and inheritance laws, including Swiss forced heirship rules.
- Learn about the different American and Swiss documents in an estate plan: wills, trusts, health care directives, living wills and financial powers of attorney.
- Coordinate the work of your US and Swiss estate attorneys to make sure that your global wealth is considered, and that conflicts between US and Swiss laws are efficiently resolved.
- Understand the difference between estate taxes in the USA and inheritance taxes in Switzerland.
- Take advantage of US-Swiss estate tax treaty benefits when helping you put together your estate plan.
- Facilitate clear communication between all stakeholders.
- Meet advisors, trustees and institutional partners specialized in strategic and tactical estate plan implementation.
- Review and help you maintain beneficiary account designations that are consistent with your estate plan and formal estate documents.
- Incorporate philanthropic planning to match your charitable giving interests with your financial capacity and family legacy goals.
- Review your current charitable giving and recommend strategies to help you improve your giving impact in a tax efficient manner.
- Incorporate gifting strategies, including maximizing current and future gift exemptions to meet your legacy goals.
- Understand the difference between revocable and irrevocable commitments such designating beneficiaries by operation of law, making testamentary gifts or gifts in living trusts, and making split-interest gifts that benefit both your family and favorite charities.
- Evaluate different asset protection strategies and make recommendations based on your situation and needs.
- Understand the impact of different estate plans and asset titling options, particularly in the case of blended families and families with special needs.
- Track changes and proposed changes in estate laws in the USA and Switzerland to understand their impact on your plan and any changes that may be needed as a result of new legislation.
Are You Ready to get
the help you are looking for?
Work with a team of experienced and specialized advisors who truly understand your situation and needs.
Still Have More Questions?
No Problem. Read the FAQs.
Do you prepare US tax returns?
Swiss American Wealth Advisors provides US tax return review services as part financial planning, but it does not prepare tax returns. One of our founders, Marina Hernandez, is also a credentialed tax professional. Her tax preparation firm, MHTax, prepares US tax returns for a few of our clients. This service is independent from Swiss American and our clients are not required to use it.
Do you prepare Swiss tax returns?
Swiss American Wealth Advisors provides Swiss tax return review services as part of financial planning, but it does not prepare Swiss tax returns. For clients of both Swiss American and MHTax, MHTax offers coordination with a Swiss tax firm to prepare both the US and Swiss tax returns using a unified client portal and document exchange system. This service is independent of Swiss American and requires separate engagements with the tax preparation firms.
Can I work with you if I don’t need investment management?
Yes. Although we manage investment assets for most clients, we do not require a minimum asset level to work with us and occasionally we work with clients with no asset management needs. Our minimum annual fee contemplates that some of our clients are looking exclusively for financial planning services because they are just starting to build their wealth, their wealth is invested in their businesses, it is tied to real estate or in employer pensions that cannot be externally managed.
Can I work with you if I don’t need financial planning?
Yes. While most of our clients want us to provide services beyond financial planning, we of course also work with clients who are looking to delegate only the management of their investment accounts. Typically, these are clients who like to work with an organization that has the expertise, experience and structure to manage their investments in an international compliant manner.
Is my money safe with you?
We work hard to make sure your money is safe. We are members of a fee-only Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) with approximately $2.5 billion in assets under management serving over 3,500 families. We work only with top financial institutions like Charles Schwab and Fidelity as our independent custodians, and we use leading industry technology for investment management and financial planning. We hold multiple professional credentials, and we are held to a fiduciary standard, which means that we are required to always provide advice that is in your best interest, even when it’s against our own.
How are you compensated?
To minimize conflicts of interest and seek better alignment with our clients, we do not accept sales commissions or referral fees from investment product providers or independent professionals. We only receive compensation in the form of wealth advisory fees paid by our clients as detailed in their wealth advisory agreements. Our clients pay us a transparent fee for our advice.
What is your investment philosophy?
We believe that a disciplined investment approach using portfolios that are well diversified across asset classes and regions can deliver superior long-term results. We build our portfolios with highly liquid and low-cost ETFs from established providers like Blackrock or Vanguard. We pay attention to asset location and follow a tax efficient rebalancing process to maximize after tax returns. We also offer ESG portfolio solutions for clients interested in considering environmental, social and governance factors with their investments. ESG portfolios have been the fastest growing segment in our investment offering.
Do you work with expats who don’t live in Switzerland?
Yes. We work with foreign families of different origins living in the USA, and with American families who at some point had ties to Switzerland but returned home or moved to third countries and wanted to keep working with us. Although we believe that our combined decades of experience on US-Swiss crossborder issues allows us to provide the best value to clients with those ties, our multicultural and multilingual backgrounds attract multinational clients who do not feel understood or well served by domestic focused advisors.
What can I do if I need advice but can’t afford your fees?
We believe that every person deserves access to quality financial education that can empower them to make good financial decisions. For individuals and families who are unable to retain our professional services, our public benefit initiatives support free financial education through the Crossborder Planner [free newsletter and blog], and the Crossborder Academy [free webinars], covering topics like tax reporting, tax planning, saving for retirement, benefiting charities or caring for the next generation.
