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  1. @Leslie,

    Greetings from seat 22A on CX238 headed to Guangzhou. Upper deck of a massive plane. I ordered the dim sum for dinner and got a funny look. I’m afraid. 🙂

    International trusts done right have an enormous cost overhead and are inflexible. On purpose. That’s for creditor protection. I will pull a random number out of the sky, since I am headed there in a few minutes. $25,000 per year. That’s an overhead guess. How much money would you need to set aside just to generate returns sufficient to pay that overhead?

    There are estate tax benefits but frankly the casino (aka the U.S. government) has stacked the tax odds highly against you. Unless there are a lot of non-US family members I question the long term value from a tax POV.

    Look at these trusts as an insurance substitute or supplement. That’s probably a better way to justify the costs.

    Short answer to your question: a few million.

  2. Good articulation of the issues here. I was wondering at what value do international trusts start to be a viable protection and are there the usual ancillary benefits (e.g. minimization of estate tax) that are usually associated with trusts?

    Thanks,

    Leslie.

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