Overcoming Separation Anxiety: Why and How to Separate Your Wealth

CE Credit: CA Dept of Insurance, CFP, and PACE

Program Overview

Business owners have typically spent their working lives accumulating assets in preparation for retirement on the understandable belief that the best place to put profits was back into the business. But with the process of accumulation often becoming an end in itself, it became easy to lose sight of the larger goal of sustainable income for retirement. With retirement now imminent for many boomers and all assets tied up in the business, retirement is at the mercy of events such as business failures, adverse economic conditions, or children who can't or don't want to continue the business. This program explains the importance to business clients of separating their personal wealth from their business. Using case studies of a mid-sized C corporation with tax liabilities and a small closely held business which is an LLC, experts show how a "separation strategy can provide economic independence with no change in standard of living, regardless of what happens to the business. Financial planners will benefit from the discussion of the various strategies, including the use of life insurance, to separate personal from business wealth to create ongoing retirement income.

Attendees will learn:

• Why it is important to separate personal from business assets
• Strategies, tools, and business entities that best protect against creditors
• The use of life insurance to fund succession planning strategies and for creditor protection
• Tried and true ways to extract money from the business

Panel of Experts:

Donald O. Jansen, J.D., LL.M., senior tax counsel, University of Texas System Office of General Counsel, is a specialist in estate planning and probate law. He is a member of the advisory committee, Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning, University of Miami School of Law.

Terence B. Stanaland, JD, ChFC, CPA, is of counsel to the law firm Teague Rotenstreich Stanaland Fox & Holt, P.L.L.C. A frequent local and national lecturer and author on financial and tax topics, he regularly consults with insurance companies and brokerage houses on technical tax matters involving financial products and services.