Partnerships and Limited Liability Companies can be important tools used when creating an estate plan. These entities can be used in a variety of ways with multiple purposes. Often, these entities are used to decrease estate and gift taxes by transferring property to children and grandchildren at discounted rates during a person’s lifetime.
These entities can also protect against creditors. By placing assets in a partnership or LLC it becomes more difficult for any one family member’s creditors to gain assets inside the entity.
In addition to tax and asset protection reasons, family partnerships and LLCs can be used to transfer property such as real estate like a family cabin or lake house. By placing a family cabin or lake house in an LLC, not only does it provide asset protection against creditors, the LLC operating agreement can be drafted to govern how the family will use the cabin by outlining who will be responsible for expenses, maintenance, scheduling, and other important items. Many of these decisions are easily solved when there are few family members but as property is transferred from one generation to the next these decisions can become increasingly problematic. By using an LLC these obstacles can be resolved before they ever become an issue.