Lisa A. Schneider leads Gunster’s Trust & Estates practice, co-chaired the firm’s Women’s Leadership Forum, and co-chairs the firm’s mentorship program. She focuses her practice on counseling families as to wealth preservation and transfer tax techniques, with a focus on planning for complex family structures and business succession.Lisa devotes her expertise and proactive counseling to guide the firm’s clients through complex transactions involving generations of families and succession planning for family businesses. Her extensive experience in representing wealthy individuals and their businesses includes representation of CEOs, business owners, multi-generational families, women professionals and business owners and young entrepreneurs.
“There is a lot of work that some clients should do right away—it’s actually imperative to address these issues in a timely fashion,” warns Jamie Hopkins at Carson Group.
One caveat is that you don’t want to pay the tax from within the IRA you are converting, because that defeats the whole purpose of this strategy. Instead, you need to have liquid assets outside the IRA to pay the taxes, and that allows the IRA to remain intact and to grow tax-free for the duration of whatever inheritance strategy you ultimately put in place. In order for the conversion to make sense in most instances, you have to have the liquidity to pay the tax. If your liquid wealth is tied up in the IRA, in business or real estate, this may not be a great approach.