Estate & Legacy Planning
An estate plan that actually gets finished.
Our advisors collaborate with estate planning counsel to develop your plan, then keep the details moving (retitling, beneficiaries, trust funding) until it's executed.
What’s included
Coordinated estate planning includes
The estate work runs through your advisor and estate planning counsel together: documents, transitions and gifting developed as part of the financial plan, not alongside it.
Wills and estate planning documentation
Core documents developed with counsel and kept current as your life and the law change.
Documents, beneficiaries and titling are reviewed alongside the tax and investment plan, on your cadence.
Trust services
Trust design and drafting through counsel, plus the funding work that makes a trust effective.
Funding is tracked item by item, because a trust controls only what is titled into it.
Powers of attorney
Financial and healthcare authority documented before it’s needed, not after.
Estate settlement
Steady, step-by-step support for executors and families administering an estate.
Business ownership and management transition planning
Succession for ownership and management of the business: the asset with the most moving parts.
Planning around a businessCharitable and family gifting strategy
Gifting vehicles, amounts and timing, coordinated with the tax plan each year.
Charitable giving is planned with the income tax work; the transfer-tax questions run with the estate review. Same team, same loop.
Services are tailored to each client’s circumstances and engagement. Not all services described are provided to every client.
The execution gap
Drafted, signed, framed. Still not finished.
A trust controls only what is titled into it, so the binder on the shelf is not the finish line. At MCF the retitling, beneficiaries and funding stay on your advisor’s list until they are done, and your advisor owns the follow-through.
Where plans commonly stall
Trust drafted
Documents signed
Accounts retitled
Beneficiaries aligned
Trust funded
A trust controls only what is titled into it. At MCF the last three steps stay open on your advisor’s list until they are done.
An estate plan isn’t finished when it’s signed. It’s finished when it’s funded.
Working with counsel
How estate planning counsel works here
Your advisor and estate planning counsel work from the same picture of your finances: the balance sheet, the account titling, the beneficiary designations, the tax plan. Documents get drafted around how your assets are actually owned and taxed, so the will, the trust, the tax strategy and the investment plan stop contradicting each other.
Your MCF advisor
Strategy and follow-through
- The estate strategy, developed inside your financial plan
- Account titling and beneficiary review
- Retitling, beneficiary updates and trust funding, tracked to done
- A standing review alongside the tax and investment plan, on your cadence
Estate planning counsel
Documents and legal advice
- Wills, trusts and powers of attorney, drafted
- Legal advice on the documents and the structure
- Engaged separately, by you, with licensed attorneys (MCF Legal PLLC or your own counsel)
MCF to counsel
The whole financial picture: the balance sheet, how each account is titled, the beneficiary designations and the tax plan.
Counsel to MCF
Documents drafted around how your assets are actually owned and taxed, so the will, the trust and the plan agree.
Legal services are provided by licensed attorneys through separate legal engagements where applicable. MCF Advisors, LLC is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice.
MCF Legal PLLC
The documents, drafted by MCF Legal PLLC.
When your plan calls for a will, a trust or a power of attorney, the drafting is done by licensed attorneys at MCF Legal PLLC through a separate legal engagement. They work from the same picture of your finances your advisor plans from: how each account is titled, who the beneficiaries are, what the tax plan assumes. The result is a set of documents that agree with the rest of the plan from the day they are signed.
For business owners, the same attorneys handle the entity, transaction and transition work that sits alongside the estate plan.
MCF Legal PLLC services
- Wills
- Trust Services
- Powers of Attorney
- Estate Settlement
- Estate Planning Documentation
- Business Ownership & Management Transition Planning
- Real Estate Transaction Agreements
- Corporate Law
- Incorporations/LLCs
- Foundations
- Mergers & Acquisitions Analysis, Valuation and Strategies
Legal services are provided by licensed attorneys through separate legal engagements where applicable. MCF Advisors, LLC is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice.
MCF Private Trust
When serving as trustee is too much to ask
Being a trustee is real work: legal duties, records, distributions, family dynamics. When that job is complex, or emotionally hard to place on someone you love, MCF Private Trust provides professional fiduciary oversight, coordinating you, your advisor and your trustee so the trust runs the way it was written.
Trust administration
The trust run to its terms: duties, records and deadlines handled professionally.
Distributions
Beneficiary requests reviewed against the document and processed with a record.
Statements
Regular statements, so trustees and beneficiaries see the same numbers.
Tax reporting and bill paying
Trust tax reporting and routine bill payment handled on schedule.
Principal and income accounting
Fiduciary accounting that keeps principal and income straight for every beneficiary.
Trust types we serve
- Revocable trusts
- Irrevocable trusts
- Charitable trusts
- Irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs)
- Special needs trusts
MCF Private Trust is a Trust Representative Office of National Advisors Trust Company, a federally chartered trust company founded by registered investment advisors to serve the needs of their clients.
The tax connection
Estate and tax are the same decisions
Gifting windows, the income tax efficiency of asset transfers and estate tax planning are reviewed together with your portfolio and your return, by the same team, on the cadence you set. An asset transfer is a tax decision; here it’s made like one.
Tax Planning & Preparation
Reviewed together, on your cadence
Legacy & Estate Planning
- Gifting windows
- Income tax efficiency of asset transfers
- Estate tax planning
From the library
Estate planning, explained
Questions
Fair questions, straight answers
Does a financial advisor do estate planning?
At MCF, yes: the coordination and the execution. Your advisor develops the estate strategy with you, collaborates with estate planning counsel on the documents, then keeps retitling, beneficiary updates and trust funding moving until the plan is executed. The documents themselves are drafted by licensed attorneys, at MCF Legal PLLC or the counsel you already have, through separate legal engagements.
Do I need to replace my current estate attorney?
No. If you have an attorney you trust, we coordinate with them: sharing the financial picture, flagging what needs drafting and handling the execution either way. If you don't have one, MCF Legal PLLC can draft the documents through a separate legal engagement.
What is trust funding?
Retitling assets (accounts, property, business interests) into the name of your trust so the trust actually controls them. A signed trust document governs only what it owns; funding is the step that makes it real, and it's the step where estate plans most often stall.
How often should estate documents be reviewed?
Estate documents, beneficiaries and titling come back around on your planning cadence, reviewed alongside the tax and investment plan, with a deeper look after major life changes: a move, a sale, a marriage, a birth, a death. Documents more than a few years old, or written in another state, usually deserve a fresh read.
Get the plan finished.
Thirty minutes with an advisor: where your estate plan stands, what's still open, and the order we'd close it in.