The Wealth Preservation Handbook: Strategies for Protecting and Growing Generational Wealth

Protect the Wealth You've Built—Before It's Too Late You've achieved remarkable financial success. You've built a thriving business, accumulated substantial assets, or reached the pinnacle of your profession. But here's the sobering reality: seventy percent of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation, and ninety percent lose it by the third. Building wealth requires one skill set. Preserving it demands something entirely different. "The Wealth Preservation Handbook" provides the sophisticated strategies that separate families who successfully transfer wealth across generations from those who watch fortunes dissipate despite having more than enough money. Author Spencer Westel draws on over twenty years working with high-net-worth families to reveal the comprehensive planning framework that protects wealth from its greatest threats: taxes, litigation, inflation, poor investment management, and family dysfunction. This Is Not Your Typical Financial Planning Book This book addresses challenges that only arise once you've accumulated significant wealth—challenges that conventional financial advisors may not fully understand or know how to address. If you're concerned about estate taxes consuming forty percent of your wealth, if you face serious liability exposure from your business or profession, if you want to create structures that benefit your children without creating entitlement, this book provides the answers you need. What You'll Discover Inside: The opening chapters systematically examine every threat to accumulated wealth, from the obvious to the insidious. You'll understand exactly how taxation, inflation, litigation, family conflict, and inadequate planning erode fortunes over time. More importantly, you'll discover precisely what to do about each threat. Advanced estate planning chapters reveal sophisticated structures that go far beyond simple wills and trusts. You'll learn about irrevocable life insurance trusts that remove millions from your taxable estate, grantor retained annuity trusts that transfer appreciating assets to heirs with minimal gift taxes, dynasty trusts that skip estate taxation across multiple generations, and family limited partnerships that create valuation discounts of thirty to forty percent. These aren't theoretical concepts but proven strategies implemented by thousands of wealthy families. The asset protection section provides comprehensive guidance on protecting wealth from creditors, litigation, and claims. Discover how domestic asset protection trusts in favorable jurisdictions create nearly impenetrable barriers, when offshore trusts make sense despite their complexity, how strategic entity structures shield personal assets from business liability, and sophisticated techniques like equity stripping that reduce exposed wealth. These strategies must be implemented before problems arise—once you're sued, it's too late.