Estate planning: a guide to protecting your future

Estate planning (or programming) is a strategic process of analyzing and managing assets over the long term, aimed at optimizing financial structure, protecting assets, and defining generational succession plans. It includes both civil (trusts, family agreements, foundations) and financial tools to ensure economic stability and solvency. 

Here are the basic details of estate planning:

• Individual and Family Planning: Focuses on wealth structuring, family lifecycle management, and succession. Tools include trusts , foundations, family agreements , cohabitation agreements , and estate planning.
• Corporate balance sheet budget: In the corporate context, it is a forecast document (part of the master budget) that estimates the final balance sheet, including changes in working capital, debts and receivables, useful for monitoring solidity.
• Wealth management and investments: This involves the individual management of capital, distinct from mutual funds, with the aim of achieving specific financial goals.
• Tools: There are professionals specialized in estate management and planning, such as those at the Agenzai delle Successioni. It's always recommended to first seek a consultation by filling out the form before accessing a service.

Careful estate planning takes into account the current regulatory and tax framework, ensuring creditor protection and effective inheritance planning. This can be achieved through a variety of tools, including a will and a specially appointed executor. It requires the involvement of various professionals, including lawyers and accountants, to ensure the legal effectiveness of the protective deeds.

When the heirs are out of town or carry out other jobs

While estate planning isn't limited to those with large fortunes, it's always helpful to avoid conflict or family disputes. Indeed, it's almost always when there's little to inherit that lawsuits arise.

There comes a moment in the life of someone who has built something solid, when their assets become the responsibility of a complex structure made up of family balances, rights, expectations, and potential vulnerabilities. It is at this point that the need for asset planning emerges.

Preparing your estate, or your business, means organizing it consciously, with a long-term vision, to prevent future events from generating unexpected events and conflicts. This is reinforced by the hectic daily routine and the skills of your heirs, who increasingly and frequently pursue different educational paths, living in other cities and working in other professions.

When there are multiple marriages and children with different partners

As we've described, there are different types of wealth. There are real estate, financial, and business assets. There are linear families and complex families, with second unions, children involved in the business, and children not involved in its management. To think that the legal rules of succession can automatically adapt to all these situations ignores the real complexity of patrimonial relationships.

The law intervenes when the owner can no longer intervene. The preparation of the estate, however, allows for earlier decisions. The appropriate instrument is not only a will; there are various viable options designed for every eventuality.

Consulting with a Agenzia delle Successioni can help guide you through a correct and uncontestable process.

Why is asset planning important?

In the absence of planning, the estate is transferred according to the ordinary rules established by law. This leads to a division of the estate that, while formally correct, may prove impractical.

Joint inheritances are often a source of tension. Undivided shares in real estate or company interests can lead to decision-making paralysis. Where businesses are present, the fragmentation of shares can jeopardize business continuity, with significant financial consequences.

The automatic nature of the law does not take into account the personal dynamics or management skills of the heirs. The purpose of the estate planning is precisely to bridge this gap between abstract law and concrete reality.

Without prior management, the risk is that entrepreneurial assets will be progressively dispersed or paralyzed by internal conflicts.

The presence of forced heirs obviously requires respect for reserved shares. This makes planning particularly delicate.

Which tools to use for asset preparation

Effective financial planning can involve various legal instruments. Among these, a will which governs the distribution of assets, certainly stands out, as do donations with the advance transfer of assets to heirs or third parties. Another option is to entrust assets to a trust, which guarantees asset protection and flexible management, as well as to establish a family holding company to manage company shares and investments. A family trust, on the other hand, protects assets from personal or professional risks by tying them to meet the family's needs.

The choice of tools depends on the type of assets and family structure, and the support of professionals such as those at the Agenzia delle Successioni is essential.

The patrimonial predisposition can change

One of the most common misconceptions is that estate planning is a rigid and immutable process. In reality, proper estate planning is a dynamic process. It can be revised over time, adapted to regulatory changes, and updated based on the evolution of the family or its assets.

Precisely for this reason, it's advisable to intervene during a stable phase, with the support of professionals like those at the Agenzia delle Successioni, rather than during an emergency. Decisions made clearly and in advance are generally more balanced and less influenced by contingent pressures.

How to avoid inheritance disputes

Ultimately, estate planning is the difference between leaving your heirs a well-organized estate and leaving them with a problem to be resolved through succession and inheritance division.

Managing your assets today means ensuring stability and continuity tomorrow. This is a conscious act, requiring in-depth analysis through specialized consultations with the Agenzia delle Successioni, to better understand the services to be decided upon, if any.

Choosing a manager, lawyer, or accountant capable of managing leases, the business, or even the properties becomes the ideal solution for the heir, without losing or selling off what our loved ones have created. We've compiled an in-depth article on this topic, which you can view by clicking here .