7 Trends in Year-End Planning for Wealthy Clients

In the substantial experience of Paulina Mejia, national fiduciary counsel at Fiduciary Trust International, there is an inevitable surge of estate planning activity in the fourth quarter of every year.

The reason for the surge, as she recently told ThinkAdvisor, is twofold.

The first, likely intractable, factor is human nature. People often need an approaching deadline in order to make tough, potentially complex decisions, and that is especially true with respect to big questions about intergenerational wealth and legacy giving.

The second factor is more addressable but also understandable, Mejia says. Often, people prefer to wait until later in the year to make estate planning decisions in order to have a better sense of how market movements or other hard-to-predict dynamics may affect their position.

For example, if there are expectations that a major policy change could be in order, sitting on the sidelines can be sensible.

But in general, Mejia argues, estate planning is best viewed as a year-round activity, especially when it comes to powerful tax-mitigation techniques such as tax-loss harvesting and exempt gifting.

Still, it is clear that 2023 will see a rush of estate planning activity during the fourth quarter, and that’s perfectly fine, Mejia says, assuming clients are getting serious now and not waiting until late December to set their goals and enact their plan. As Mejia warns, rushing estate planning decisions in order to beat a year-end deadline is not a recipe for success.

See the slideshow for a list of seven year-end estate planning and charitable giving considerations for wealthy clients. As Mejia emphasizes, every client has a unique viewpoint about legacy planning, but there are also some common threads that warrant consideration.