Estate Planning
Estate Planning Connected to the Rest of Your Wealth
Estate planning often begins with documents such as a will, a trust, and powers of attorney. Those documents matter, but they are only part of how an estate plan works. Account titling, beneficiary designations, how assets are invested, and the gifts you make during your lifetime all shape what actually happens. As families grow, marry, and move through new stages, a plan that made sense years ago may no longer reflect what you intend.
Sunpointe helps you connect those pieces. We review how your estate plan fits with your investments, accounts, and beneficiary designations, consider estate and gift tax implications, and plan for transfers that may unfold over decades, including trusts designed to span generations. For many families, estate planning also connects to family governance, helping the next generation understand the plan before they inherit. We work alongside your estate attorney, sharing information and aligning recommendations, so your estate plan and your financial plan support each other. As your family and wealth change, we help you recognize when the plan needs another look.
Your Documents Were Drafted Years Ago
Your estate documents were prepared some time ago, and you want to know whether they still reflect your family and your wealth.
Wealth Will Pass Across Generations
You want trusts, gifts, and transfers planned with children and grandchildren in mind, and coordinated with how your wealth is invested.
A Life Event Has Changed Things
A marriage, a birth, a divorce, a death, or a business sale has changed your family or finances, and you want your estate plan to reflect it.
Four Steps to a Coordinated Estate Plan
Estate planning is not a one-time event. Here’s how we help you understand your plan, connect it to your wealth, and keep it aligned with your family over time.
Understand Your Current Plan
We start by reviewing your existing documents, account titles, and beneficiary designations to see how your estate plan works today.
Clarify Your Intentions
We talk through who and what you want your wealth to support, now and for future generations, and where your plan may need attention.
Align and Coordinate
We consider estate and gift tax implications, connect your plan to your investments and giving, and share recommendations with your estate attorney.
Revisit Over Time
We review your plan as your family, your wealth, and the laws that affect it change, and we let you know when updates may be needed.
Inside Estate Planning at Sunpointe
An estate plan works only as well as the details that support it. These are the areas where we focus, each one connected to your investments, your tax picture, and your family’s goals.
We review your wills, trusts, and related documents alongside your accounts, so you can see how the plan works in practice and where it connects to your wealth.
We review account titles and beneficiary designations against your intentions, since these can take precedence over what your other estate documents say.
We help you plan lifetime gifts to family and to charity, including gifts of appreciated assets, as part of a long-term approach to transferring wealth.
We plan around trusts designed to last for decades, mapping when they distribute or end and how they fit into the family’s broader financial picture.
We consider how estate and gift taxes may affect your plan and coordinate strategies with your CPA and estate attorney.
We help heirs understand the plan before they inherit, often through family meetings and education that connect the estate plan to the family’s values.
Ready to Take a Fresh Look at Your Estate Plan?
Bring your current estate documents, or simply your questions. We’ll talk through how your plan works today, how it connects to your wealth, and whether it still reflects what you intend.
Explore Related Services
An estate plan is shaped by more than the documents behind it. Family governance, tax planning, and your financial plan each influence how your wealth moves between generations, and all of them are coordinated through your Sunpointe relationship.
Family Governance
We help families define their mission and values and prepare the next generation, so heirs understand the plan before they inherit.
Tax Planning
Estate and gift decisions carry tax implications across many years. We look at your tax picture over time and coordinate strategies with your CPA.
Financial Planning
Your financial plan shows what your wealth can support during your lifetime, which helps determine what you can comfortably give or transfer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to common questions about estate planning.
Call us at 314-880-0821 or send a message.
No. Sunpointe does not provide legal advice. Your estate attorney is responsible for drafting and finalizing your estate documents, and Sunpointe works alongside them, reviewing how your plan fits with your investments, accounts, and beneficiary designations and aligning your financial plan with your estate plan.
At Sunpointe, we take on that coordinating role. We work alongside your CPA, estate attorney, and other professional advisors, sharing information and aligning recommendations so their advice fits together. You don’t have to carry decisions from one advisor to the next or reconcile conflicting recommendations on your own.
There is no fixed schedule, but an estate plan is worth revisiting after major life events, such as a marriage, divorce, birth, death in the family, or the sale of a business, and when tax laws change. Sunpointe reviews how your estate plan fits with your wealth as part of our ongoing relationship and lets you know when an update with your attorney may be worthwhile.
Retirement accounts, life insurance policies, and some other assets pass directly to the people named as beneficiaries, often regardless of what a will says. If those designations are outdated or don’t match your estate plan, assets may not go where you intend. Sunpointe reviews account titles and beneficiary designations against your plan as part of our estate planning work.
Sunpointe plans for transfers that may unfold over decades, including trusts designed to last for generations. We map when trusts distribute or end, coordinate gifting and estate tax strategies with your attorney and CPA, and help prepare heirs through family meetings and education, so each generation understands its place in the plan.
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