Estate Planning · Tucson, Arizona
Wealth transfer planning that keeps your documents and accounts in agreement
Estate planning strategies
Estate planning strategies
for families and business owners
Most estate plans are built once and then left alone while the assets underneath them keep changing. GIS works alongside your attorney and CPA, checking that the documents, the account titling, the beneficiary forms, and the insurance still describe the same intentions.
Estate planning is more than documents
Many estate plans begin with well-written legal documents, but over time those documents drift from the assets they were designed to govern. The result is an orphan plan: signed, filed, and never connected to what you actually own. Four questions surface most often.
- Whether the trust was funded after it was drafted
- Whether the insurance is owned in a way that fits the estate objectives
- Whether the business succession intent is reflected in the financial plan
- Whether tax law or family changes have been revisited since
Our role is to review these four together and identify where the financial side has come out of alignment with the estate documents. We covered what the current federal rules changed for larger Tucson estates in HNW Estate Planning Tucson.
What a revocable living trust in Arizona actually controls
A trust only governs the assets you move into it. Retitling a house, a bank account, or a business interest into the trust is the step that makes it work, and it is the step most often left unfinished.
Assets that carry their own beneficiary form, including retirement accounts, usually pass outside the trust no matter what the trust says. Confirming which of your assets sit inside it and which do not is one of the first things we look at.
Working alongside your attorney and CPA
GIS does not draft documents. We give your attorney the financial detail they need and work with your CPA on the tax side, so the plan gets built once rather than corrected later. In practice that means:
- Verification of titling: confirming every account and asset is titled the way the trust instructs
- Tax efficiency review: working with your CPA on how the estate distributes and what that costs
- Beneficiary audit: confirming the designations on retirement accounts and policies match the rest of the plan
Our role in estate administration
When a transition happens, the family needs continuity. We work alongside your executors and trustees on the technical transfer of assets, so the people carrying it out are not starting from scratch on documents they have never seen.
Much of that work is knowing which professional handles which piece, and making sure each of them has what they need at the point they need it.
One plan, seven moving parts
Pick a piece and see what it controls
How coordination changes the outcome
When the trust says one thing
and the form says another
The documents are usually sound. What decides the outcome is whether the accounts underneath them were ever checked against what the documents say. The illustration below works through one common version of that.
Illustration · When the beneficiary form outranks the trust
A trust that divided three ways, and an account that did not
Consider a couple with roughly $4 million, of which $1.5 million sits in an IRA. Their trust divides everything equally among three children. The IRA beneficiary form, signed when the account was opened and never revisited, names only the eldest. At the second death the trust governs the $2.5 million outside the IRA, so that portion splits three ways at roughly $833,000 each. The IRA passes by beneficiary form to one child, who receives $1.5 million on top of their $833,000. Two children receive $833,000. One receives $2.33 million. Nothing was drafted incorrectly. Nobody compared the two documents. What happens to an inherited IRA after that point is covered in our guide to what happens to my IRA when I die.
The trust was correct. The form was correct. Read together, they did something neither one intended.
Illustrative scenario shown for educational purposes. It does not describe a specific client engagement.
Since 2009
Coordinating estates across Southern Arizona
Four documents
Trust, will, beneficiary forms, and titling, read as one set
Alongside your team
We work alongside your attorney and CPA, not around them
Common Estate plan review questions
Estate planning questions Tucson families ask
Does a beneficiary form override my will?
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.
What is the difference between GIS and an estate planning attorney?
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.
Do I need to already have an estate plan to work with you?
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.
When should I review or update my estate plan?
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.
My assets are in a trust. Isn’t everything already handled?
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.
Is estate coordination only worth it for large estates?
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
Find out where your estate plan agrees with itself
No pitch and no product. A private review of your documents, your beneficiaries, and the accounts in between, with an honest read on where they have come apart. You keep your attorney and your CPA.
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