LEGACY AND FAMILY BUSINESS

HELPING YOUR WEALTH PASS TO THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE, AS YOU INTENDED

You built something worth passing on. Years ago you did the responsible thing: the trust is signed, the will is written, and life moved on.

Since then, accounts have opened and closed, property has changed hands, the business has grown, and the children have grown up. The documents have stayed exactly as they were. Almost everyone lets this sit. It is nobody’s job to keep watching, and for our clients, that is the job we do.

A Family Office for Your Family

By now, your financial life has the moving parts of a business: trusts, properties, entities, tax filings, and perhaps a company of your own. A business with this much in motion has a chief financial officer. The wealthiest families have long had one too, a family office running the details so the family can live its life.

As your family CFO, we keep the pieces coordinated from one place, quietly, and we find the decisions before they become problems. Your attorney and your CPA carry their parts; we make sure the parts fit. We bring the decisions to you ready to make.

And we do more than keep the plan current. We manage your wealth as part of that same plan, so your investments, your taxes, and the eventual transfer are decided together.

We work alongside your estate attorney and your accountant, and we bring them into the same conversation.

LRVS is a national practice, serving clients coast to coast from our offices in the Boston and Seattle areas. We work with high-net-worth families and business owners, we are independent, and we sit on your side of the table.

If coordinating the attorney, the CPA, and the investments has been your job, your first conversation with us shows you what it looks like when it is ours.

YOUR FAMILY CFO

  • Your attorney

  • Your CPA

  • Your investments

  • Your taxes

  • The transfer

Keeping Your Wealth Transfer Working

Equity Compensation FAQs for Technology Professionals

Restricted stock units are taxed as ordinary income when they vest, on the full market value of the shares that day, whether or not you sell them. Your employer withholds at the default rate for supplemental wages, which sits below the bracket most people at this income level land in, and the difference is owed at filing. What the share price does afterward is a separate capital gain or loss, measured from the vest-date value.

You cannot change the tax at vest, but you can change nearly everything around it. When you sell, which lots you sell, what offsets the gains, how much you defer through retirement and deferred compensation elections, and what you give to charity in a high-income year are all open. Those decisions have to be made before December, not at filing.

The discount is an immediate return that does not depend on the share price rising, which is why an employee stock purchase plan is usually worth funding when your cash flow allows it. The harder question is what to do with the shares afterward. Selling at purchase locks in the discount and is taxed as ordinary income. Holding through the qualifying period changes the tax treatment and adds more of your employer to a portfolio that likely holds a great deal already.

Private-company shares usually vest on two triggers: a time-based schedule and a liquidity event such as an initial public offering or an acquisition. Until the second trigger occurs, the shares are not yours to sell. That gap is why decisions about early exercise are worth making years before an exit. The same is true of the qualified small business stock exclusion: eligibility is mostly a question about the company rather than about you, and your holding period determines how much of the gain is excluded.

There is no universal pace. The right one depends on your tax year, your trading windows, and how much of your household already depends on that employer. What matters more than the speed is that the schedule is written down and decided in advance.

It is a selling schedule set in advance, which keeps working even during a blackout window. You need one if you are an insider. It is useful either way if you would rather make the decision in a calm month than a volatile one.

Financial planning at LRVS is typically a flat annual fee. Investment management is charged on a tiered schedule based on the assets we manage. Every relationship is different, so the numbers for your situation are set out in the introductory meeting, before you have committed to anything.

Yes, and most clients do. We work alongside the professionals you already have and bring them into the same conversation, so the equity decisions, the tax work, and the estate documents rest on the same facts. Where you do not have someone, we can introduce you to people we work with regularly.