Our planning process incorporates all of your financial and life considerations into a cohesive strategy that structures your wealth for the long-term. Our goal is to fully understand your individual needs – and those of your family – and help you turn your objectives into a tangible plan of action.
Once your plan is established, we recommend and implement effective trusts and other entities to help accomplish your goals. Wilmington Trust has expertise serving in a variety of fiduciary capacities, including Trustee, Directed Trustee, Custodian, and others. Every trust is administered by a highly skilled team with the utmost discretion and integrity. Our planning and trust services include:
Estate Planning and Strategic Wealth Transfer
Pass your legacy on to your heirs, protect your family and business, grow your assets, reduce taxes, and provide for your charitable legacy. After evaluating your current estate and asset structure, we can help you and your advisors develop a plan to most efficiently transfer wealth to your heirs and charitable beneficiaries in a tax-conscious way.
Philanthropic Planning
Through a comprehensive philanthropic plan, you can support causes that you believe in, promote family values and social responsibility, and leverage the tax-deductible nature of charitable gifts. Once you've identified your philanthropic goals, we can advise on the different tax benefits of making outright gifts, leaving bequests, or establishing charitable trusts and private foundations.
Business Succession Planning
We can provide transition advice to help you determine if selling your business or passing it on to your family for continuation is the right alternative as you plan for your retirement years. Through a business structure assessment, retirement/income needs assessment, and an analysis of your estate and wealth transfer plan, we can help you implement a succession plan that best meets your specific circumstances.
Executive Benefit Planning
If much of your wealth is concentrated in a single corporate stock, you need prudent strategies to help reduce risk, create liquidity, and defer taxes. We can explore options for managing your concentrated stock position, including an outright sale, the use of blind trusts, options strategies, exchange funds, and loss harvesting.
Life Insurance Planning
The way you designate ownership and beneficiaries can have a large impact on whether or not your insurance is included in your estate for federal estate tax purposes. We can help you determine which type of insurance would be most beneficial for your situation, and advise you on ownership and beneficiary designations.
Fiduciary Oversight
As nationally recognized experts in exercising fiduciary oversight on complex family situations, we demonstrate impartiality, fairness, and sensitivity to the needs of the beneficiaries we serve. We ensure that each trust is administered in strict accordance with its specific provisions and that the trust's terms are carried out as its creator intended.
Personal Trust Administration
We provide comprehensive trust management, including tax return preparation, annual tax information, regular income payments, principal and income accounting, recordkeeping, and ongoing investment management. Our team of professionals is committed to responding to inquiries and handling transactions in the most timely and trusted manner.
Delaware Advantage
Throughout our long history, Wilmington Trust Company in Delaware has helped to shape the latest trust, tax, and estate planning legislation. Our experienced professionals include some of the foremost authorities on Delaware Trust law, and have helped individuals, families, and businesses take advantage of Delaware's favorable environment for trust and estate planning for generations.
If you're interested in learning more about the trust advantages under Delaware law, please let us know and we'll put you in contact with one of our Wilmington Trust Company professionals.
