The value is real. It is in the building, the company and the land. The tax bill is due in cash, nine months after death, and the heirs find out then.
A family owns three commercial buildings, a closely held company and a ranch. On paper it is a large estate. In practice there is no account with that kind of cash in it, and there was never meant to be. The wealth is working.
Then the estate tax comes due, and it comes due in dollars. The heirs, still grieving, are handed a deadline and a choice: sell a building in a hurry, borrow against the business, or take the IRS up on an installment plan with interest. The best asset is usually the one that sells fastest. It is rarely the one the family wanted to let go.
The current exclusion is large, and the planning stopped. But an estate above it still owes 40 percent on the excess, and estates grow.
A life insurance policy owned by the person who dies is counted in their estate. The coverage bought to pay the tax gets taxed.
Real estate and private companies sell on the buyer’s timeline, not the IRS’s. A forced sale is a discounted sale.
The child running the company wants to keep it. The others want their share in cash. Without liquidity, the estate forces the argument.
A trust owns the policy, so the proceeds arrive outside the taxable estate, in cash, when the tax is due.
The federal exclusion is $15 million per person and $30 million per couple in 2026, indexed and without a scheduled sunset. We plan against the estate you will have, not the one you have today.
Moving growth out of the estate while you are alive, into trusts built to last, so less is taxed and more reaches the people you intend.
The trust documents, the ownership and the coverage have to agree. We work inside the plan your attorney has drafted, not around it.
Every one of these runs through the CORE Process™ — with your CPA, your attorney and your other advisors building from the same plan.
When the time comes, the trust receives the proceeds and provides the cash the estate needs. Nothing is sold under pressure. The child who runs the business keeps running it; the others receive what they were promised. The estate you built is the one your family inherits.
$15 million per individual and $30 million for a married couple, indexed for inflation, with no scheduled sunset under current law. Amounts above the exemption are taxed at 40 percent. State rules vary; California currently has no separate estate tax.
An irrevocable life insurance trust: a trust that owns a life insurance policy on your life so the death benefit is not counted in your taxable estate. The trustee receives the proceeds and can use them to provide liquidity to the estate, typically by purchasing assets from it or lending to it.
Without planning: by selling assets, borrowing, or electing an IRS installment arrangement with interest. With planning: from life insurance proceeds held outside the estate, sized to the projected tax, so the assets themselves never have to be sold.
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