wealthschema/archetypes/e-02-estate-planning-client-grantor
E-02Wealth TransferPreservationvery-high tax complexity

Estate Planning Client (Grantor)

HNW individual actively engaged in estate planning, irrevocable trusts, gifting strategies, charitable vehicles.

E-02 models the active estate-planning grantor in the years leading to the post-2025 exemption sunset: HNW, mid-60s, structuring SLATs, ILITs, and annual-exclusion gifting against a use-it-or-lose-it deadline. It is the canonical test for trust-account onboarding, Form 709 generation, and grantor-trust income flow-through.

Age Range
55–75
Net Worth
$5M–$30M
Cohort
Wealth Transfer

About this archetype

E-02 exists because the federal estate-and-gift-tax landscape is at a known inflection point. The TCJA's doubled lifetime exemption — $13.61M per individual in 2024, projected $13.99M in 2025 — sunsets to roughly half that on January 1, 2026 absent Congressional extension. HNW households who have not yet used their exemption face a finite window to gift assets into irrevocable structures (SLATs, IDGTs, GRATs, CLATs) and lock in the higher exemption against the IRS's anti-clawback regulations under §2010(c)(3). The corpus surfaces households actively engaged in that planning: net-worth median of $10.94M sits squarely in the band where the exemption decision is consequential but the household is not yet in family-office territory. Trust-administration software, fiduciary accounting platforms, and estate-tax-modeling tools all need test data here, and the corpus is calibrated to provide it.

The cash-flow shape is high but variable: median gross income of $372,595, p25–p75 of $248k–$472k. The variability reflects the mix of W-2, K-1 partnership income, trust-distribution income, and qualified-dividend-plus-LTCG that defines HNW grantor households at this tier. Liquid net worth of $4.89M against $10.94M net worth puts roughly 45% of assets in liquid form — high enough to fund a meaningful annual gifting program while still leaving illiquid concentrations (closely-held business, real estate, concentrated public stock) on the balance sheet. All 20 households are homeowners, all 20 file MFJ, and the median age (63) places the cohort in the post-peak-earning, pre-distribution-required-by-RMD window where estate planning is most active.

What distinguishes E-02 from neighbouring HNW archetypes is the grantor posture and the planning-as-action signature. H-02 ($3M–$10M) and H-03 ($10M+) describe the asset profile; E-02 describes the household that is actively transacting on the planning surface — funding SLATs, paying premiums into ILITs, making annual-exclusion gifts, and generating Form 709 reportable events. The 'Legacy / estate' goal on all 20 records, plus the dual-debt-payoff goal pattern (both an active mortgage and a planning-driven secondary debt-payoff target), is the diagnostic signature. This is the household that exercises grantor-trust income flow-through to the personal return under §671, dynasty-trust funding decisions, and the GSTT exemption allocation that estate-tax software must handle correctly.

Defining characteristics

  • Annual-exclusion gifting program
    Households make recurring §2503(b) annual-exclusion gifts ($18k/donee in 2024, projected $19k in 2025) to children, grandchildren, and trusts, generating Form 709 reporting when amounts exceed the exclusion.
  • SLAT / IDGT funding
    Spousal lifetime access trusts and intentionally-defective grantor trusts are funded against the current high lifetime exemption to lock in pre-sunset gifting capacity.
  • ILIT premium funding
    Irrevocable life insurance trusts hold survivorship policies for estate-liquidity purposes; the household pays premiums via Crummey-notice gifts to the trust.
  • Charitable remainder vehicle
    Charitable remainder trusts (CRT/CRUT) and donor-advised fund contributions appear in the gifting program for households with charitable intent; income-tax deduction stacking and the §664(d) AFR-rate annuity calculation become testing surfaces.
  • Dynasty trust posture
    Multi-generational planning with GST-exemption allocation is in scope; trust-accounting software must handle the GST inclusion-ratio and the automatic vs election-out allocation under §2632.
  • Estate tax exposure
    Combined household net worth above the projected 2026 reduced exemption ($7M-ish) makes federal estate tax a real exposure absent planning; state estate-tax exposure adds in MA, NY, OR, WA, and a dozen others.

Corpus signature

n = 20 households

Aggregated across the 20 E-02 households in the shipped v3 corpus corpus. Numbers describe the corpus, not population claims.

Median income
$373k
p25–p75 $248k–$472k
Median net worth
$11M
mean $12M
Liquid net worth
$4.9M
median
Investable assets
$6.5M
median
Income distribution
$200k–325k
7
$325k–450k
5
$450k–575k
6
$575k–700k
2
Net-worth distribution
$7.3m–9.3m
2
$9.3m–11.3m
9
$11.3m–13.3m
4
$13.3m–15.3m
5
Goals across the corpus
Retirement20 / 20
Debt payoff20 / 20
Legacy / estate20 / 20
Liability composition
Credit cards20 / 20
Mortgages20 / 20
Student loans8 / 20
Auto loans3 / 20
  • All 20 households are homeowners.
  • CA, TX, MA account for 10 of 20 households — 50% of the corpus.
  • Median adult-member age is 63 (range 50–75 across primaries and spouses).
  • 10 of 20 (50%) carry one or more dependents.
  • Married filing jointly is the dominant filing status (20 of 20).

Representative household

E-02-seed-4
Kevin J.Married filing jointly·NM Metro Area, NM

Kevin and Helen sit near the E-02 net-worth median at $10.75M, with $4.84M liquid against $1.7M in liabilities — a meaningful primary mortgage even at this wealth tier, which is the marker of the still-active-planning household. The Legacy / estate goal plus dual debt-payoff goals signal that the planning is in motion: one debt-payoff target is the working mortgage, the other is a planning-driven secondary balance. This is the household that breaks software assuming HNW means debt-free.

Combined income
$372,770
Net worth
$10,750,541
Liquid NW
$4,838,233
Ages
66 / 68
Top goals on this household
Retirement
$6,635,400
Debt payoff
$1,554
Debt payoff
$1,688,992

Schema fields covered

Every E-02 household ships with — at minimum — these JSON fields populated. The full schema is documented in the data set you purchase.

members[].age
income.combined_gross
net_worth.total
filing_status
accreditation.status
accreditation.qp_status
assets.alts.private_equity[]
assets.alts.capital_calls[]

Who builds against this archetype

Three buyer profiles drive E-02 demand. Estate-planning and trust-administration platforms use the corpus to validate grantor-trust onboarding, Form 709 generation, Crummey-notice workflow, and GST-exemption allocation logic. Tax-software teams working at the HNW tier (advisor-facing tax-planning and high-end professional tax-prep platforms) use it for grantor-trust income flow-through testing, AMT and NIIT interaction, and charitable-deduction stacking under §170(b) limits. RIA and multi-family-office wealth-platforms use the corpus for fiduciary-account onboarding, trustee-vs-beneficiary access controls, and the dollar-magnitudes where bespoke-product gates engage. Insurance carriers underwriting survivorship policies for ILIT funding also test against the corpus's age-and-net-worth combinations.

Testing scenarios this corpus is calibrated for

  • 01SLAT / IDGT funding scenarios against the pre-2026 sunset exemption, including spousal-mutual-SLAT reciprocal-trust-doctrine edge cases.
  • 02GRAT structuring with §7520-rate-driven remainder calculations, including the grantor-survives-term and grantor-dies-during-term branches.
  • 03Form 709 (gift-tax return) generation across annual-exclusion gifts, lifetime-exemption gifts, and Crummey-notice ILIT premium gifts.
  • 04Grantor-trust income flow-through under §671 onto the grantor's personal return — interest, dividends, and capital gains taxed at the grantor's rate.
  • 05GST-exemption automatic-allocation and election-out testing under §2632, including indirect skips and the inclusion-ratio calculation.
  • 06Charitable remainder trust (CRT/CRUT) modeling with §664(d) AFR-driven income-stream and charitable-deduction calculations.
  • 07ILIT survivorship-policy premium funding with Crummey-notice paper trail and trust-owned cash-value tracking.

Edge cases and what's not in this corpus

E-02 is calibrated as the active-planning grantor, not the post-mortem estate-settlement case. Probate, post-mortem QTIP elections, and §6166 deferred-payment installments belong with H-04 (widowed HNW spouse) or as overlays on the relevant H-tier archetype. UHNW grantors with private foundations, direct-investment vehicles, and FLP-aggregated valuations belong in H-03 — E-02 covers the $7M–$15M band where the planning is sophisticated but a single attorney-and-CPA team handles it. Younger grantors (under 50) actively planning ahead of unusual wealth events are P-06 territory until they have established the asset base. State-only estate-tax planning at lower net-worth (e.g., a $3M Massachusetts household worried about state tax) is partially in scope but better tested with an H-01 plus state-overlay rather than E-02. Finally, business-succession planning where the operating company is the dominant asset is closer to P-02 with an estate overlay.

Calibration notes

Income, net-worth, and gifting-program shape were anchored during v3 synthesis to IRS SOI Form 706 and Form 709 aggregate data for the relevant filer band, with the SLAT/ILIT prevalence informed by Cerulli affluent-practice benchmarks and ACTEC practitioner surveys on pre-sunset planning activity. State distribution over-weights CA, TX, MA because the planning surface concentrates in high-marginal-state-tax and state-estate-tax jurisdictions. The corpus does not encode specific trust balances as discrete fields — they appear inside the household's investable-asset and liability totals with provenance signaled by the structural notes. Per CLAUDE.md §9, the v3 corpus is frozen and not regenerable; calibration descriptions reflect synthesis intent rather than auditable quantile fits.

How this differs from related archetypes

Frequently asked questions

What does the E-02 archetype represent?+

E-02 — Estate Planning Client (Grantor) represents the HNW household actively engaged in irrevocable trust funding, annual-exclusion gifting, and charitable-vehicle planning in the years before the TCJA exemption sunsets at the end of 2025. The corpus is calibrated for trust-administration, gift-tax-return generation, and grantor-trust income flow-through testing.

Why is the 2025 sunset important to this archetype?+

The TCJA doubled lifetime estate-and-gift exemption (currently around $13.6M per person) drops to roughly half on January 1, 2026 absent Congressional action. Households at $7M–$15M net worth face a finite window to lock in the higher exemption via irrevocable gifts, with IRS anti-clawback regs under §2010(c)(3) protecting the planning if completed before sunset.

Does the corpus encode specific trust structures (SLAT, ILIT, IDGT)?+

Not as discrete fields. The corpus is shaped so that the planning is plausibly in flight — gifting program, liquid-asset shape, age range — without committing to which specific structures any one household holds. Buyers needing structure-typed test data layer that overlay on top.

How does E-02 differ from H-02 (HNW $3M–$10M)?+

H-02 describes the asset profile; E-02 describes the active-grantor posture. The overlap is meaningful but the testing surfaces are different — H-02 for asset-allocation and platform-tier gates, E-02 for gift-tax and trust-administration flow.

Which synthetic wealth data sets include E-02 households?+

E-02 is tagged for six bundles — B05, B06, B11, B12, B14, and B24 — covering investment management, goals-and-planning, advanced planning, estate planning, behavioral finance, and values-aligned investing.

Is the E-02 corpus regenerable?+

No. The shipped v3 corpus is frozen and not regenerable from current code (CLAUDE.md §9). Sampler improvements land in a future v4 release with per-archetype golden fixtures in CI to prevent silent drift.

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