She and her team also built buy-sell agreements to give the client’s children the option to sell their interests in the U.S. to their siblings. The life insurance will fund the buy-sell, so the brother running the business won’t have to come up with the assets to buy the business when the parents die.
“The son is essentially getting a loan for the life insurance premiums,” said Metzger. When the business is funded with the large death benefit, he’ll owe most of this amount to his siblings but he’ll get the business, she said.
The client’s total net estate transfer (after taxes and expenses) was originally going to be roughly $24 million, but the planning boosts it to $41.7 million, she said. The trusts’ income streams for the heirs are included in this nearly $18 million addition, she said.
When Metzger met with her client and his children, she always spoke to the parents in Spanish. When working with transnational clients, it’s helpful to be bilingual, said Metzger, whose mother is from Mexico, or to bring in bilingual experts.
Metzger worked with the client’s attorney and CPA (who she said confirmed the accuracy of the valuations the client had done in Mexico for his assets there). The team brought in a transnational estate-planning attorney to build the trust.
“You have to have people who work in this realm,” said Metzger, “The law and the codes are so complicated.” To make decisions, plan and act, she said, “You have to know what you’re doing because you can really make a mistake.”