Legacy & Estate Strategies
The insurance role in legacy and estate planning, coordinated with the client's estate attorney. We don't replace estate counsel — we work alongside it.
Start with your situation
A few quick taps make the first conversation specific to your estate and where liquidity or structure is needed. Nothing is sent until you add your contact details on the next step. Prefer to read first? The detail is just below.
Estimated estate size
Your main concern
Your estate plan
How liquid is the estate?
Is an estate attorney engaged?
Part of our guide: Estate planning for illiquid estates →
Where insurance fits in estate planning
Life insurance has a real role in legacy and estate strategy: providing liquidity at death, funding estate-tax obligations where applicable, equalizing inheritance among heirs with different needs, supporting a charitable legacy where giving is part of the goal, structuring intergenerational wealth transfer in ways that account for tax and timing. Where an estate may owe federal tax, the estate-tax liquidity calculator gives a first read on whether it could pay in cash or would be forced to sell.
The role is real, but it is one piece of a larger structure that is fundamentally legal work. Trusts, wills, powers of attorney, healthcare directives, beneficiary designations — these are the domain of estate counsel. Insurance fits within the structure; it does not create the structure.
What this planning area covers
We work on the insurance role in legacy planning: appropriate types of permanent coverage where lifelong need exists, survivorship structures for couples, irrevocable life insurance trust (ILIT) funding when the client's estate attorney has determined an ILIT serves the situation, beneficiary structuring within insurance products.
Each engagement involves coordination with the client's estate attorney. We do not design trust structures, draft documents, or make recommendations that belong properly in the legal realm. We provide the insurance analysis that complements what the estate attorney has structured.
How we approach the conversation
The first conversation usually starts with understanding what estate work has already been done. If an estate plan exists, we work within it. If it doesn't yet exist, we typically recommend that estate work happen before — or alongside — insurance decisions, because the insurance design depends on the estate structure.
Honest framing: estate planning is sufficiently consequential that it should not be approached through the insurance professional first. Clients without estate documents are usually better served by getting that work done with qualified estate counsel before significant insurance commitments are made.
Where insurance ends and other professionals begin
We are not estate planners. We do not draft wills, create trusts, advise on probate, or provide legal advice on estate matters. Those are the work of estate planning attorneys. Our role is the insurance professional in the planning team — providing analysis, product expertise, and coordination with the legal work being done by qualified counsel.