Estate and trust advisory services

Overview

We provide best practice estate planning solutions to people who wish to protect and preserve wealth for themselves and their families. Many of our clients are referred by financial planning and accounting professionals seeking the best estate planning solutions for their clients. Others are referred by friends and colleagues who have experienced the peace of mind and value of our advice and service.

For your benefit we work together with your professional advisors to understand and address complex legal, financial and family issues. The result is soundly planned and implemented estate planning strategies that offer you the following benefits:

Certainty in the fulfilment of your wishes

Tax-efficient transfer of the control of your wealth

Reduced potential for interference from disgruntled claimants, and

Protection for beneficiaries in need.

Your Will

A simple Will can often turn your estate into a very expensive nightmare for your executors and beneficiaries. When dealing with very important modern estate planning issues, ask yourself these questions:

Does your Will make it easy for your beneficiaries to save the potentially very significant Income and Capital Gains Tax arising from your estate?

Does your Will protect each of your beneficiaries from losing their inheritance to bankruptcy, or offer protection to a beneficiary going through a relationship breakdown?

Who gets your retirement benefits when you die?

Will all your children be treated equally under your Will?

Who gets control of your family trust and the assets held by it?

Did the person who prepared your last Will ask “are you happy to allow the wealth that you have worked for to be squandered by an immature or vulnerable beneficiary?”

Modern Wills, incorporating discretionary testamentary trusts, can greatly enhance the value of the inheritances you leave by providing your beneficiaries with the ability to eliminate or reduce the array of taxes they may have to deal with, and at the same time simply and cost-effectively wrap up their inheritances with secure protection from the claims of creditors, spouses, etc, so their inheritances can be easily kept and passed down within the family.

PwC will assist the nominated executor or executrix under a duly appointed mandate to administer and wind-up deceased estates. PwC will also assist trustees to deregister Trusts at the relevant Master of the High Court of South Africa.