We review all your beneficiary designations and make sure they’re correct and coordinated with your estate plan.
A couple from the Arcadia neighborhood in Phoenix came to us last month because their attorney told them to “update beneficiaries” on their retirement accounts. They’d been married 12 years, had two kids, and had never changed the beneficiaries from their previous marriages. If either of them died, their ex-spouses would have inherited everything: the house, the retirement accounts, the life insurance. Their current spouse and kids would have gotten nothing.
This happens all the time. People think estate planning is just wills and trusts, but the beneficiary designations on your accounts override your will. Arizona is a community property state, which adds rules most people don’t know about. Get one piece wrong and your money can go to the wrong person.
We’re not attorneys and we don’t draft documents. We work with your Arizona estate attorney to make the financial pieces line up: reviewing beneficiaries, funding trusts correctly, and coordinating your accounts with your estate documents. With a CPA on our team, we can also help keep the tax side efficient. A great plan on paper means nothing if your beneficiaries are wrong or your trust isn’t funded.
Your beneficiary designations decide who gets your retirement accounts and life insurance, and they override whatever your will says. Most people name a beneficiary once when they open an account and never look again. Then life changes: a divorce, a remarriage, a new child. If the form still names an ex-spouse or a parent, that’s who gets the money.
We review every beneficiary designation across your 401(k)s, IRAs, TSP, and life insurance, then make sure they match your estate plan. In Arizona, a community property state, your spouse may have rights to some accounts even if someone else is named, so the details matter. We catch the gaps before they become a problem for your family.
You paid an attorney to draft a will and trust, but is it actually coordinated with your financial accounts? We work with your Arizona estate attorney to make sure your financial accounts, insurance policies, and beneficiary designations align with your estate documents.
Having a trust is great. Having an unfunded trust is useless. We help Arizona families fund their trusts correctly by retitling assets and making sure the right accounts flow through the trust and the right accounts bypass it.
Legacy planning is about deciding what you want your wealth to accomplish after you’re gone—supporting your family, funding education, helping causes you care about. We help Phoenix families think through how they want to structure their legacy beyond just leaving money.
If you want to support charities, there are smart ways to do it and expensive ways to do it. We help Phoenix families give back in a tax-efficient way through donor-advised funds, appreciated stock donations, and charitable bequests.
Let’s review your beneficiaries and coordinate your plan with your attorney.
For other inquiries, you can reach us at (602) 396-2741.
Yes. We review beneficiary designations across your 401(k)s, IRAs, TSP, and life insurance, and make sure they match your estate plan. Outdated beneficiaries are the most common gap we find.
No. We’re not attorneys. We coordinate with your Arizona estate attorney so your financial accounts and beneficiaries line up with the documents they draft.
Yes. We work alongside your attorney and handle the financial side, so nothing falls through the cracks between the two.
In a community property state, your spouse may have rights to certain assets no matter who’s named. We flag where that applies so your plan does what you intend.
Yes. An unfunded trust does nothing. We help retitle the right assets into the trust and keep the right accounts out of it.
