5 Ways to Leave a Legacy to Your Heirs

One of your primary estate planning goals may be your wish to leave assets to your heirs. You want to ensure that your loved ones are financially secure after your passing. There are many ways to accomplish this goal, but annuities are quickly growing in popularity due to their diversity and flexibility. In fact, you might be surprised that the right annuity can help you accomplish the following five goals.

Protection from creditors. Many assets can be subject to collection actions after your passing. But depending upon the specific laws in your area, an annuity can be passed to beneficiaries while bypassing all creditors. This is an issue to discuss carefully with your estate planning attorney.

Provide income to someone who is not covered by a trust. In many cases, individuals choose to place certain assets into a trust, to be distributed to beneficiaries by a trustee. But for whatever reason, you might want to provide income to an additional person not covered by the trust. In this case, your trustee can use money in the trust to purchase an annuity for that heir.

You want to provide income at a later date. You might want to provide income to your heirs, but you don’t want the payments to begin immediately upon your death. Perhaps you want children to finish college first, for example. In this case, you can purchase a deferred annuity. Taxes on all gains will be deferred, which can be very helpful when the annuity is owned by a trust subject to a compressed tax rate.

Enjoy the stability of an annuity, so that you can reap larger rewards elsewhere. Many people tend to invest their retirement savings conservatively, because they don’t want to take big risks with their only form of income. Since lower-risk investments typically do not provide large returns, this can mean that you aren’t able to build enough capital. But when you enjoy the stability of the guaranteed income provided by an annuity, you’re left with greater freedom to take risks – and reap bigger rewards – with any money you have left over. This means you could build a greater legacy to leave to your heirs.

Know that your money will be used wisely. You might want to leave a gift to someone who, for whatever reason, is unable to manage a lump sum of money wisely. This can often be the case when an adult child is disabled, or chronically mismanages their own money. An annuity can allow you to leave income to this heir without risking loss of the funds.

These are just some of the ways that an annuity can bolster your estate planning objectives. For more detailed answers to your concerns, call our office at 877-281-8282 and we can discuss whether an annuity is right for you.