FINANCIAL FOCUS

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Heir Flow

Transferring wealth to the next generation

For years, you’ve worked hard and made careful decisions about your life and money. With time and some good fortune, you have managed to accumulate, grow and protect valuable assets. Now, you’re ready to shift your focus from acquiring wealth to transferring it to

That transition can be challenging—whether your wealth is modest or considerable—because it is rarely as straightforward as dividing assets into equal parts and assigning them uniformly to designated recipients.

Wealth created by one generation can be a source of provision and opportunity for generations that follow. It can also create issues and unintended consequences for those who earned it and those who inherit it, unless there is an adequate, thoughtful strategy that leverages the counsel of legal, tax and financial professionals along the way.

Thought process

Do you believe your heirs are automatically entitled to your wealth, or do you expect them to earn it in some way?

Do your heirs have enough financial knowledge and maturity to manage future wealth for themselves?

Does each heir get an equal share of your wealth? Or do you accommodate an heir’s unique needs in a disproportionate way?

How do you balance the need to provide for future generations with your desire to be philanthropic?

Family counsel

Wealth transfer is likely to involve people who share a history with a lifetime of feelings, assumptions, and expectations to complicate it.

That is why the most difficult part of wealth transfer could actually be communication: clearly sharing your inten-

By Evans Attwell

Senior Vice President

Frost Bank

Contact Evans at 713.388.1367 or evans.attwell@frostbank.com.

Investment and insurance products are not FDIC insured, are not bank guaranteed, and may lose value.

Brokerage services offered through Frost Brokerage Services, Inc., Member FINRA/SIPC, and investment advisory services offered through Frost Investment Services, LLC, a registered investment adviser. Both companies are subsidiaries of Frost Bank.

Investment management services, financial planning and trust services are offered through Frost Wealth Advisors of Frost Bank.

Additionally, insurance products are offered through Frost Insurance.

Deposit and loan products are offered through Frost Bank, Member FDIC.

Frost does not provide legal or tax advice. Please seek legal or tax advice from legal and/or tax professionals.

tions with your heirs long before assets move from one generation to another.

Early and continuing preparation that allows everyone to participate, ask questions, and talk about concerns can prevent misunderstanding and damaged relationships years later.

Professional help

Because wealth transfer is appropriately part of your comprehensive estate planning, you’ll want the counsel of individuals with expertise in areas that include legal issues, taxes, wills and trusts, investing, banking and risk management on your team.

Working together, these professionals can provide guidance about alternatives that could enable you to continue to preserve and grow assets, manage tax liabilities, advance your personal goals, and make the wealth transfer process more straightforward and less stressful for you and your heirs.

WE’RE IN THE PEOPLE BUSINESS. WE JUST HAPPEN TO BE A BANK.

Unmatched service. Sound advice. And peace of mind knowing your money is well cared for. Now, how can we help you today?

Visit us at our River Oaks Financial Center, 2443 Westheimer or call at (713) 388-1059.

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Continued from page 17 insides from the months of violent sexual encounters. Each hospital worker knew she was a victim of human trafficking, but instead of getting her services, they handed her a pamphlet. When her parents tried to get mental health warrants, they were told they needed an exact address and time to serve the warrant, which was impossible because they lived out of hotels. They can’t have her involuntarily committed because the law does not recognize addiction or human trafficking as a credible “threat to oneself or others.” As it stands, a person has to express their desire to commit homicide or suicide to be committed. The system and the law have failed Grace at every turn.

Grace was out of the life of human sex trafficking for 36 days. She spoke very candidly about the pimps who chased her down the street with guns in an attempt to capture her for their stable (the term used to describe a pimps group of girls), serial killers, and rapist that picked her up. This resulted in her jumping from a moving car out of fear that they would kill her. Also, to avoid the rapes, the men with odd fetishes, the abusive men who wanted to hit her, and the addictions fueled it all. Grace was the girl who didn’t need anything from anyone and knew how to take care of herself armed only with a pocket knife for protection. She talked about it all as if she was describing a movie and that it wasn’t her life. Then there was the other side of Grace that still cried when she talked about her 12th birthday party, the bullying, and the sadness over the relationship she had built with that trafficker who gave a teenage girl a warm place to stay on a cold night. As she described the friends she had made on the street with the other girls in the same situation she was in, it clicked. She felt accepted in a way that she hadn’t since she was 11 years old. She felt like no one was judging her, and no one would be disappointed in her because there were no expectations as long as she

met her quota. She had formed a new group of “friends,” and just like the last ones, she didn’t see that they too would hurt her and that she was only with them because of geographic proximity, much like those girls from junior high.

Grace also talked a lot about how much she missed her “boyfriend” (her first pimp), who she saw as some prince charming from a fairy tale, and who is currently on bond and has even done prison time for repeated convictions for domestic violence. Grace was showed these charges, the convictions, and the charging instruments, and momentarily she realized she was just another woman in the same situation with the same man. She described him being physically abusive toward her, hitting her and choking her until she passed out, but even with all of the realizations about who he indeed was, Grace still loved him. Domestic violence can feel like an addiction, and it’s a tough cycle to break. The best way to explain human sex trafficking is, it’s the place where domestic violence and sexual assault intersect.

Grace was showing so much promise, and for the first time since leaving her old life, she was optimistic and hopeful. She was finishing school online. She had met with her advocate and even started counseling services. Her advocate explained that she would help her get housing but that it takes a minimum of six months to a year, which seemed like forever in her now 19-year-old brain, but she was excited. She laid out a list of in-patient and out-patient services available to her and the process for utilizing said resources while she waited for housing. She had a plan to move forward with her life. Grace was starting over. She had the help of some donors who helped her get some clothes, have a little money, and she had a safe place to stay away from the life and everyone she had left behind, but it wasn’t far enough. Everything seemed so normal, and one morning she was gone again. No note, not a trace, she just left. Ten days later, her dad tracked her down at a motel room on the Northside of Houston near Spring, where she had reconnected with some girls that she was with before, her “friends.” Her dad forced her back home, and they were working to find a treatment facility, which is few and far between and require the victim to want to enter the program. When we talked, I asked her what happened and why she left. She said she wanted friends, was feeling restless and alone, and just wanted a place of her own where she would have freedom and independence. She didn’t admit being sucked back into her old life, or to the addiction that started it all, and the “friends” who trafficked her. Not long after that conversation, Grace was gone again. She is back to where it all started, in danger every time she gets into a car with a stranger, controlled by traffickers and drugs, and her parents are powerless to help her. At every turn, someone in her path with the ability to help her had the current legal system or resources available to victims was adequate. Could the school counselors who took Grace to the homeless shelter have avoided putting her on the collision course if they had more training and understanding of addiction, homelessness, and trafficking? Maybe the nurses who encountered her at the hospital with only a pamphlet to give her could do more with the right services to offer. The police officer who took her report could have done more if he had more services to offer. It leads us back to the elected officials, prosecutors, and judges’ duties to keep traffickers off the street.