(520) 360-8177

Estate & Succession · Tucson, Arizona

Your Documents Say One Thing. Your Money Says Another.

Your will names your children. Your retirement account still names an ex-spouse — and the account wins. Most estate gaps aren’t bad documents; they’re pieces that were never coordinated. We make your documents and your money finally agree.
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Estate Planning Business Planning Retirement Planning Charitable Gift Annuities Insurance ESOP Structures Serving Tucson Since 2009 (520) 360-8177 Estate Planning Business Planning Retirement Planning Charitable Gift Annuities Insurance ESOP Structures Serving Tucson Since 2009 (520) 360-8177
Global Investment Strategies

One plan, seven moving parts

Pick a piece. See what it silently controls.

Proof, not promises

Coordination that held up under real complexity

The insight is only worth anything if it can be executed. Here is one example of what coordinated estate planning looked like for a family whose situation left no room for error.

Case Example · Distressed Real Estate Family

A substantial estate with moving parts in every direction

GIS worked with the estate of one of the largest distressed-real-estate buyers in the country. After reviewing the family’s full picture, we coordinated a structure built around multiple Safe Harbor captive insurance companies under IRS code 831(b), designed to manage the family’s risk while adding protection for key employees. Working alongside the family’s existing advisors, the plan used life-insurance leverage to create living benefits — and it was orchestrated in roughly six months. The estate was large, but the principle scales: the value comes from the pieces being coordinated, not from any single product.

The value was never one product. It was getting every piece to work as one plan.

Since 2009

Coordinating estates across Southern Arizona

~6 months

To structure and implement the plan above

Alongside your team

We work with your attorney and CPA, not around them

Estate planning questions

Frequently asked questions

Yes. The beneficiary designation on a retirement account, IRA, or life insurance policy controls who inherits that asset — regardless of what your will says. An outdated form naming an ex-spouse will be honored over a current will. Reviewing beneficiary forms against your documents is one of the first things we check.
An estate planning attorney drafts your legal documents — your will, trust, and powers of attorney. GIS coordinates the financial side so those documents actually work: making sure your beneficiary forms, insurance ownership, business interests, and account titling line up with what the documents say. We work alongside your attorney, not in place of one.
No. Some clients come to us with a fully drafted plan that has never been coordinated; others are starting from scratch. Either way, the first step is the same: a review of what you have and where the pieces don’t line up. If you need documents drafted, we’ll coordinate with an estate attorney.
Any major life or financial change is a trigger: marriage or divorce, a new child or grandchild, a business sale, a large change in net worth, a move to another state, or the death of a beneficiary. Even without a life event, beneficiary forms and account titling are worth reviewing every few years — they drift out of date quietly.
Not necessarily. A trust only controls the assets you actually move into it. An “unfunded” trust — one where accounts and property were never retitled into it — is a common and expensive gap. And assets with their own beneficiary form, like retirement accounts, usually pass outside the trust entirely.
No. The larger the estate, the more the coordination is worth — but the gaps we find (a stale beneficiary form, an unfunded trust, a policy owned the wrong way) happen at every size. What makes coordination valuable is complexity, not just dollars: a blended family, a business, or several advisors who have never talked to each other.

Move from complexity to clarity

See where your estate plan agrees — and where it doesn't

No pitch and no product. A private review of your documents, your beneficiaries, and the pieces in between — and an honest read on where they don’t line up. You leave with a clearer picture of your own plan, whether or not you ever work with us.

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Confidential · No obligation · Tucson, Arizona