Rental Property Investor · Lake Hallie, WI · Member since 2015 · 292 posts · 144 votes
Hi, so I'm finally going to get my estate in order and I'm wondering what others on here have done to help their heirs not be totally confused in having to take over your company. My wife and I currently have 85 units over 26 properties. 7 are personally owned, 2 are owned by my Roth holding LLC. The remainder are in the main LLC. What questions should I be asking my lawyer when we meet? What sort of structure do you have? FYI. We do have kids and I have two older school aged kids. I'm early 40's and she is a little younger.
Some examples of estate planning I have done with my real estate clients include the use of family limited partnerships to freeze value of estate along with defective grantor trusts; LLCs with preferred interests (similar to debt instrument); sale of membership interests to defective grantor trusts; annual gifting of LLC interests using discounts for lack of marketability and/or lack of control, etc.
It will come down to what your goals and wishes are, as well as what the economics of your finances looks like. If you are concerned of being in an estate tax environment, consider then both estate and income tax (step up basis planning). While the current lifetime exemption is approx $ 11.7M, this is set to be cut in half effective 1/1/26, and that reduction may further be accelerated if tax legislation gets passed. Current bill from house ways and means committee cuts exemption effective 1/1/22.