A-Hole-in-One: Holistic Approach To Estate Planning

Published date19 December 2020
Subject MatterTax, Family and Matrimonial, Inheritance Tax, Wills/ Intestacy/ Estate Planning
Law FirmYigal Arnon & Co
AuthorMr Guy Sagiv

Guy Sagiv co-heads the Family Wealth Management Group at the Yigal Arnon & Co. law firm and has been advising high net families and individuals on their estate planning for more than a decade. Guy believes that the coronavirus is a wake-up call for every person who has been procrastinating with dealing with their estate planning.

Don't you find it awkward to conduct meetings over Zoom or Skype on such sensitive and complex matters?

"Admittedly, I did think this will be an issue, but then I realized that the lack of boundaries actually creates a more friendly and informal environment for clients, making such meetings much more effective by creating intimacy which is very hard to achieve at our offices the 47th floor in Azrieli Towers in Tel Aviv."

I understand that you have recently adopted a new holistic approach. Why?

"I believe that our decision to adopt the holistic and cumulative approach used in England and the US in the area of family wealth management and private clients has proven itself during the years and more so during the recent pandemic."

So what is exactly a "holistic and cumulative approach" to wealth management?

In Israel a client seeking legal advice associated with wealth management is often required to deal with lawyers from different specialty groups and, at times, different firms, and integrate the advice independently. The lawyer who made a will for a client, for instance, is often not aware that there is a foreign trust of which the client is a beneficiary, and the client's tax advisor may not know what is written in the will, because in Israel there is no inheritance tax. This may create legal oversights and potential point of exposure such as tax liabilities in Israel or abroad, which lead to increased struggles in what is already a sensitive and stressful situation. Matters become even more complex when clients have property abroad, multi-national citizenship, foreign clients who own property in Israel, family members and descendants living abroad, new immigrants or returning residents etc. This is the reason why our Family Wealth Management group is regarded as a "specialty task force" comprised of our top legal experts from the firm's various departments- Family, estate and trusts, tax, real estate, corporate, High-Tech, IP etc. In addition, we have created a network of top experts from main jurisdictions in the world in order to provide our clients a "one-stop-shop" for all their legal needs with regards to their estate...

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