Advanced Case Design

What "Case Design" Actually Means

I have access to a specialized design team to help with asset protection, tax reduction, stock market risk mitigation, long-term care planning, and more. "Case design" simply means that, with outside specialists brought in as needed, we outline in detail the proper components of a plan — asset protection, income, capital gains or estate tax reduction, and retirement planning, all working together rather than as disconnected pieces. No single advisor or advisory team can have all the answers to every client's questions or needs. I'd rather be honest about that limitation and bring in the right specialist than pretend to be an expert in every advanced planning discipline myself.

This resource is most beneficial to clients who make more than $150,000 a year in income or have estates of $3,000,000 or more — situations complex enough that the standard toolkit isn't always sufficient, and where the cost of getting a strategy wrong (or missing one entirely) is significant.

What Makes It Different

The design team is headed by Roccy DeFrancesco, JD, CWPP™, CAPP™, CMP™, Founder of The Wealth Preservation Institute and Co-Founder of the Asset Protection Society, and author of several planning books including Retiring Without Risk. The team also draws on The Wealth Preservation Institute's educational board — individuals with years of experience in their respective fields.

Critically, the design team is not housed at an insurance company, IMO, GA, or broker-dealer. That matters, because design teams housed inside those organizations are often self-interested in selling or pushing the products that organization sells — which limits their ability to do what's actually right for the client. Since the team isn't captive to any single product manufacturer, the strategies that come out of a case design session are driven by what fits your situation, not by what happens to be on a preferred-vendor list.

How This Actually Works With Me

I don't hand you off to a separate team and step out of the picture. I stay involved throughout — I bring in the design team when your situation genuinely calls for it, sit in on the analysis, and I'm the one who explains the resulting strategy to you in plain language and helps implement whatever parts of it make sense for your goals. Think of it less as an outside referral and more as expanding the table when a question is bigger than any one advisor should try to answer alone.

A typical case design engagement starts with a detailed review of your current situation — income, assets, business structure if applicable, existing estate documents, and your specific goals. From there, the team maps out which advanced tools genuinely apply to your circumstances (most of them won't, for most people — that's normal, not a sales pitch to use all of them) and I bring back a specific, prioritized set of recommendations rather than an overwhelming list of every tool that theoretically exists.

Advanced Tools Available Through This Team

Advisors on the Advanced Case Design team have access to planning tools that most advisors aren't familiar with, including Intentionally Defective Grantor Trusts (IDGTs), Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs), Self-Cancelling Installment Notes (SCINs), international planning, captive insurance companies, freeze partnerships, cash balance and 412(e)3 plans, 401(h) plans, carve-out planning, retained earnings rescue strategies, Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans (SERPs), Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), life settlements, reverse mortgages, and premium-financed life insurance.

Most of these tools are unfamiliar even to experienced financial professionals, simply because they come up rarely — they're built for specific, higher-complexity situations rather than the general population. That's exactly why having access to specialists who work with these tools regularly matters more than trying to be a generalist who dabbles in everything.

Who This Is (and Isn't) For

If your situation is relatively straightforward — a comfortable retirement funded by typical accounts, a modest estate, no closely held business — advanced case design tools are probably unnecessary complexity, not a missed opportunity. This resource exists for the situations where the standard toolkit genuinely falls short: business owners with significant retained earnings, larger estates facing real estate tax exposure, high-income professionals looking for sophisticated tax reduction, or families with unusually complex liability or succession concerns. If you believe your situation calls for this level of advanced planning, I'd welcome the opportunity to talk it through with you — and if it turns out you don't need it, I'll tell you that too.

Frequently Asked Questions