Tag: estate planning

Given the importance of a Will as a key component of any estate plan, it's worth the relatively minor investment of time and money to ensure that you get it 100% right. After all, your Will plays a fundamental role in ensuring that the solid estate plan you've spent so many hours developing is put into action on your death, without undue delays, unexpected costs or negative impacts on those you care about.

Keeping up to date with legislative and case law changes in the highly regulated financial services industry can be challenging. Professionals need to make effective financial decisions, with a myriad of implications, while ensuring regulatory compliance and keeping current.

This year, nearly one in five married South Africans will make the decision to start afresh and get a divorce. As you put your life back together after a relationship split don’t get distracted from updating your Will to reflect your new status. 

A trust is a legal arrangement, where assets are held by one party (the trustee) for the benefit of another (beneficiary) as instructed by the owner (trustor/settlor). Recently many people have started to question the usefulness of trusts, given that the tax benefits afforded to trusts in the past, have eroded over time.

The investment landscape has changed profoundly over the past decade, making it easier than ever for individuals to take control of their own investment portfolios. It’s a simple matter for nearly anyone to trade shares via their online banking platform, for example, or to access a range of funds and products from an online stockbroker or wealth management firm.

The saying goes that we should pay Caesar what he is due and not what he demands. To achieve this in tax planning, estate planners use donations as one of the ways in which to effectively and legally help individuals reduce the taxable values of their estates. Donations of up to R100,000 per year can be used to reduce estate duty.

Trusts are well known as tools for estate planning but often misunderstood in terms of their role and usefulness in preserving wealth for family and heirs.

Estate planning doesn’t need to be overly complicated, yet there are common mistakes people make that can have devastating outcomes for those left behind. A misunderstanding with wording in your will can result in the opposite of what was intended.

For most people the words 'death' and 'marriage' do not belong together in the same conversation. The last thing on people’s minds when they get married and enter into an ante-nuptial contract is death – the focus is usually around possible divorce. Likewise, when planning the affairs around our demise, very few of us would be thinking about marriage.

Protecting and growing wealth is critical in the current local and global economic and political climates, in order to take care of yourself and your family. For investors to accumulate wealth, a target, strategy and implementation plan is required.