Your Estate Plan and Your Financial Life Need to Work Together

An estate plan is about more than having a will or trust. It is about making sure the financial life you have built can ultimately pass according to your wishes. Your investment accounts, retirement accounts, beneficiary designations, life insurance, business interests, real estate and other assets may all play a role. That is why estate planning should not happen in isolation.

At Catalano Financial, we help clients coordinate their financial strategy with the estate plan created by their attorney—so the legal documents and the financial pieces are working toward the same goals.

What Does Estate Planning Coordination Include?

A strong estate plan brings together the legal documents your attorney creates with the financial assets and decisions that may ultimately determine how your wealth is transferred. At Catalano Financial, estate planning coordination may include reviewing how your overall financial strategy connects with:

• Beneficiary designations on retirement and investment accounts
• Life insurance and other sources of liquidity
• Ownership and titling of financial assets
• Business interests and succession planning
• Retirement assets and income strategies
• Charitable giving and legacy goals
• Coordination with your estate planning attorney and tax professional

The goal is not for your financial advisor to replace your attorney. It is to help make sure your financial plan and your estate plan are working together.

Beneficiary Designations Matter

One of the most important parts of estate planning may not be contained in your will or trust at all.

Retirement accounts, life insurance policies and certain other financial accounts may pass according to the beneficiary designation on the account or policy. That makes keeping those designations coordinated with your overall estate plan especially important. Changes in your family, marriage, divorce, the birth of children or grandchildren, the death of a beneficiary, or changes to your estate plan can all be reasons to review them.

As part of the planning process, we can help identify accounts and policies with beneficiary designations and coordinate those decisions with the estate planning strategy developed with your attorney.

Your legal documents may say what you want. Your financial accounts need to be structured to help carry out those intentions.

Estate Planning for Business Owners

For many business owners, the business may be one of the largest assets in the estate—and one of the most complicated to transfer. An estate plan should consider what happens to the business if an owner dies, becomes disabled or is no longer able to run the company.

Questions may include:

• Who should own the business next?
• Who will manage it?
• Should family members, partners or key employees eventually take ownership?
• How will the business be valued? And where will the money come from to complete a transfer?

Buy-sell agreements, life insurance, disability buy-out insurance and other strategies may help address different parts of that transition when appropriate.

At Catalano Financial, we help business owners consider how the business fits into their personal financial and estate strategy while coordinating with the attorneys, tax professionals and other advisors involved.

Because your business isn’t separate from your estate. It’s part of the wealth—and the legacy—you’ve spent years building.

Life Insurance and Estate Planning

Life insurance can play an important role in an estate plan when there is a need to create liquidity or provide financial protection for the people and organizations you care about. Depending on your circumstances, life insurance may help provide funds for a surviving spouse or family, create an inheritance, support charitable goals, provide liquidity for business succession, or help address other financial needs at death. But owning life insurance isn’t enough. The amount of coverage, beneficiary designations, policy ownership and how the insurance fits with the rest of the estate strategy all matter.

At Catalano Financial, we evaluate life insurance as part of the broader financial plan and coordinate with your estate planning and tax professionals when appropriate.

The question isn’t simply how much life insurance you have. It’s what you need the insurance to accomplish.

Leaving a Legacy

Estate planning is ultimately about more than transferring assets. It is about deciding what you want the wealth you have built to accomplish after you are gone. For some families, that means providing financial security for a spouse, children or grandchildren. For others, it may include helping fund education, supporting a church or charitable organization, preserving a family business, or creating opportunities for future generations. Those decisions are deeply personal—which is why we believe estate planning should begin with your values and goals before moving to financial strategies.

Your attorney can help create the legal structure. We help you think through the financial resources that may be needed to support it.

A good estate plan doesn’t just answer, “Who gets what?” It helps answer, “What do I want my wealth to accomplish for the people and causes that matter to me?”

We Coordinate. Your Attorney Creates the Legal Plan.

Estate planning works best when the professionals involved in your financial life are working together. Catalano Financial does not provide legal advice or prepare wills, trusts, powers of attorney or other legal documents. Those services should be provided by a qualified estate planning attorney. Our role is to help coordinate the financial side of the estate plan—your investments, retirement accounts, beneficiary designations, insurance, business interests, charitable goals and other financial resources—and work with your attorney and tax professional when appropriate.

This can help identify financial decisions that may need attention as your attorney develops or updates your legal documents.

Your attorney builds the legal structure. We help make sure your financial life is coordinated with it.

Need Help With the Legal Documents?

If you don’t currently have an estate planning attorney or need help getting basic estate planning documents in place, there are resources available. Peter Catalano is also an independent LegalShield representative. LegalShield provides members access to provider law firms for covered legal services, which may include estate planning services such as wills and other estate planning documents, depending on the membership plan and circumstances.

LegalShield is separate from Catalano Financial’s investment advisory services. Peter may receive compensation in connection with a LegalShield membership, and clients are under no obligation to use LegalShield or any particular attorney or legal service.

Start With Your Financial Road Map®

Estate planning decisions shouldn’t happen in isolation from the rest of your financial life.

Before deciding how assets should eventually transfer, it helps to understand what those assets need to accomplish for you today, the people and causes that matter most to you, and the legacy you ultimately want to leave.

That’s where the Financial Road Map® begins.

Together, we organize your financial life, clarify what matters most and identify the planning decisions that may need attention—including areas that should be coordinated with your estate planning attorney and tax professional.

Your estate plan is about where your wealth eventually goes. Your Financial Road Map® begins with why you built it in the first place.

Estate Planning Coordination in The Woodlands, Texas

Catalano Financial provides estate planning coordination for individuals, families and business owners in The Woodlands, Texas, who want their financial plan and estate plan to work together.

We help coordinate the financial pieces—including investments, retirement accounts, beneficiary designations, life insurance and business interests—with the estate planning and tax professionals responsible for the legal and tax advice.

Whether you’re creating an estate plan for the first time, reviewing an existing plan or preparing for a significant transition, the goal is the same:

Make sure the financial life you’ve built is coordinated with the legacy you want to leave.