Legacy and Estate Planning

You have spent a lifetime building wealth. How it is transferred — to your family, your causes, and the people you love — deserves the same care and intention you gave to accumulating it. At Legacy Ascent, we help individuals and families design an estate plan that reflects their values, protects their heirs, and ensures that nothing is left to chance.

Our fiduciary advisors coordinate with your estate attorney and CPA to align your beneficiary designations, account titling, charitable giving strategies, and intergenerational wealth transfer plans into one cohesive picture so your wishes are honored efficiently and your family is protected from unnecessary taxes and confusion.

Whether you are just beginning to think about your legacy, updating an existing estate plan, or navigating the complexities of inherited IRAs and charitable giving, our process gives you the clarity and confidence that comes from knowing your plan says exactly what you mean.

 Most people spend decades focused on building wealth — and very little time thinking about what happens to it. Without a coordinated estate plan, even well-built retirement assets can be eroded by taxes, tied up in probate, or distributed in ways that create conflict rather than connection.

Intentional legacy and estate planning helps you:

• Ensure your assets go to the right people in the right way — without ambiguity
• Minimize the tax burden your heirs face on inherited IRAs, investments, and real estate
• Align beneficiary designations on every account and policy with your true estate intentions
• Pass wealth to children and grandchildren in ways that strengthen rather than complicate relationships
• Design a charitable giving strategy that maximizes impact while reducing your own tax exposure
• Protect a surviving spouse from financial uncertainty after your passing

Without coordinated legacy planning, well-intentioned wishes can be overridden by outdated paperwork, and the people you love most can end up navigating a complicated, costly, and emotionally draining process.

At Legacy Ascent, our goal is to make sure your legacy reflects exactly what you intended and that the people you care about are protected long after you are gone.

Unlike advisors who treat estate planning as a checklist item, Legacy Ascent integrates legacy and estate planning directly into your written retirement plan — coordinating every piece with your attorney, CPA, and long-term income strategy.

Our Legacy Planning Framework Includes:

✔ Comprehensive beneficiary review across all accounts, policies, and trusts 

✔ Trust funding coordination with your estate attorney — ensuring assets are titled as intended 

✔ Intergenerational wealth transfer strategies for children and grandchildren 

✔ Charitable giving design: QCDs, Donor-Advised Funds, and charitable trust strategies 

✔ Inherited IRA planning for heirs — minimizing tax burden under the 10-year SECURE Act rules 

✔ Family financial education — preparing the next generation to receive and steward wealth responsibly 

✔ Ongoing review as tax law, family circumstances, and account structures change

This integrated approach ensures your estate plan works in harmony with your retirement income plan — not independently of it.

 Many retirees have estate planning documents in a drawer somewhere, but those documents have never been fully coordinated with how their accounts are actually titled or who their beneficiaries are.

Our planning process commonly uncovers:

• Beneficiary designations on IRAs, 401(k)s, and life insurance policies that are outdated or misaligned with estate intentions
• Assets held outside a trust that was designed to receive them — bypassing the estate plan entirely
• No strategy in place for heirs to handle an inherited IRA tax-efficiently under the 10-year SECURE Act rules
• Charitable giving done informally in cash rather than through tax-efficient vehicles like QCDs or Donor-Advised Funds
• Significant estate tax exposure that coordinated planning could reduce or eliminate
• Children or grandchildren who will inherit significant wealth with no guidance or preparation for managing it

Identifying and correcting these issues early  while options are still open  can preserve hundreds of thousands of dollars and protect your family from unnecessary conflict and cost.