An estate plan is not a document, it is architecture

On building wealth that weathers time, and why even the finest structures need maintenance.

The Iowa State Capitol has stood on its hill above the Des Moines River for nearly 140 years. It was built to last. It has also been renovated, restored, and rethought more times than most people know. That is not a contradiction. That is the point.

I can see the Iowa State Capitol from my office window. Most mornings I barely notice it. The gold dome shining in the early light, familiar in the way only the best things become when you stop paying attention. But a few years ago I spent some time reading about how it was actually built, and I have not quite looked at it the same way since.

Construction began in 1871. The first cornerstone was laid that November. Then a harsh Iowa winter arrived, the foundation stone deteriorated, and the whole thing had to be redone. A second cornerstone was laid in September 1873. The lead architect died in 1876, a decade before the building was finished. New architects took over, modified the dome, and revised the interior. The General Assembly moved in during January 1884. The Supreme Court chamber wasn't dedicated until 1886. Fifteen years. Nearly $2.9 million, almost double what was promised.

Then fire, in 1904. The House chamber's ceilings, walls, and woodwork had to be fully rebuilt. The dome was regilded. The electrical system, started before the fire and left unfinished, was finally completed. And it kept going from there: the dome has now been regilded five times. A $10 million structural renovation ran from 2017 to 2019, addressing moisture damage inside the dome that had been quietly worsening for years. The damage was not visible when the exterior was regilded in 2005. It was only discovered when someone looked closely at what was happening beneath the surface.

"A well-built structure and a neglected one can look identical from the street. The difference is what is happening inside."

Chris Benda, Founder, Benda & Co.

I think about that Capitol every time I sit down with someone whose estate plan was "taken care of" years ago.

The structure most people never build

The most common estate planning situation I encounter is not someone with a bad plan. It is someone with no plan, or something drafted once, years ago, sitting in a drawer like a cornerstone that was never inspected after the first hard winter.

They are accomplished people who have spent decades building something real and quietly assumed things will sort themselves out. They won't. Not without a structure.

The federal estate tax exemption now sits at $15 million per person ($30 million for married couples) thanks to legislation passed earlier this year. For many families, that provides more breathing room than they have ever had. But a higher threshold does not eliminate the need for a plan. It changes where the vulnerabilities are.

Twelve states and D.C. have their own estate taxes at much lower exemptions, as low as $1 million in Oregon and $2 million in Massachusetts. The 40% federal rate still applies above the exemption. Business interests, real estate, and illiquid assets create structural problems that no amount of exemption alone can solve. And the law will change again. It always does.

The question is never whether you need a plan. It is whether the one you have is actually designed to hold.

Pouring the foundation and getting it right

In estate planning, the foundation is an honest accounting of what you own, where it sits, and what the rules are in your specific state. It is knowing which assets are liquid and which are not. Three decisions shape everything that follows.

The annual gift tax exclusion ($19,000 per recipient in 2026) is one of the most underused tools available. Every year it goes unused is a year of growth that stays inside your taxable estate instead of moving permanently beyond it. Small, consistent, and compounding: the financial equivalent of laying a course of stone. Not dramatic individually. Load-bearing over time.

Portability and the marital deduction allow a surviving spouse to use any unused portion of the first spouse's exemption, preserving the full $30 million combined threshold. But this must be claimed through a timely estate tax return. Miss the filing, and the benefit is gone. The foundation must be poured correctly to hold what comes later.

The step-up in basis means assets passed at death receive a new cost basis equal to their fair market value on that date, potentially eliminating a lifetime of embedded capital gains. Whether to gift an asset now or hold it for transfer at death is not a minor decision. It is a foundational one that can shift the tax outcome by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The dome that has been regilded five times

To see it in the Des Moines skyline, the dome always looks elegant, substantial, and solid. But history tells a different story. The first gilding cost $3,700 in 1883. The most recent major restoration ran from 2017 to 2019 and cost $10 million. In between, each generation discovered something the previous one had missed or could not have anticipated. The 2005 regilding looked fine from the outside. But moisture had been traveling through the brick masonry for years, quietly weakening the interior structure, rusting the wrought iron, causing brick to spall and collect at the base of the dome. The building looked intact. The damage was invisible until someone looked beneath the surface.

This is the pattern I see most often in estate planning. A plan is put in place. It looks right. Solid. Substantial. Then a business is sold. A child divorces. The family moves from a no-estate-tax state to one with a $1 million exemption. Asset values triple. The law changes. And the plan that looked intact from the outside has been quietly absorbing structural stress it was never designed to handle.

“The most expensive estate planning mistakes are not dramatic failures. They are invisible ones: the moisture damage no one thought to look for because the dome still looked gold from the street.”

Chris Benda, Founder, Benda & Co.

The load-bearing walls

The Capitol dome gets its stability from a three-dimensional arch system. Steel beams fanning out from the peak, with brick between them, distributed so that no single point bears all the weight. Remove one element and the integrity of the whole changes. A well-designed estate plan works the same way.

I want to be direct about something before walking through these structures: none of them are exotic. I see versions of all of them in nearly every serious estate plan I work on. What separates the families that protect the most wealth is not knowing these tools exist. It is building them while there is still time to do it properly.

A Spousal Lifetime Access Trust (SLAT) moves assets out of the taxable estate while preserving the other spouse's indirect access. It reduces exposure without sacrificing access entirely: an interior wall that defines and protects without sealing off what should remain open.

A Grantor Retained Annuity Trust (GRAT) is designed for high-growth assets. You place them in the trust, receive annuity payments for a set term, and if the assets outperform the IRS hurdle rate, the excess growth passes to heirs at little to no gift tax cost. It is a structure purpose-built for moving the momentum of appreciating assets out of your taxable estate before it accumulates further.

An Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT) keeps the death benefit from pushing an already substantial estate over the exemption line. Without it, the asset designed to provide liquidity at death becomes the thing that creates a tax problem.

A Dynasty Trust carries the structure across generations, built around the Generation-Skipping Transfer exemption to reduce or avoid transfer taxes as wealth moves forward in time. It is, in the most literal sense, the part of the building designed not for the people who commissioned it, but for the ones who will inhabit it a hundred years from now.

For business owners, one element is non-negotiable: a succession plan. Business ownership is often the single largest asset in the estate, and it is often illiquid. Without a plan, heirs may inherit something they cannot easily sell while facing a tax bill that can only be paid by liquidating part of what they just received. A Family Limited Partnership, a buy-sell agreement, a structured ownership transfer over time: these are not optional additions. They are structural requirements for anyone whose estate includes a business they spent decades building.

Building with intention

Some of the most meaningful wealth transfers are not to heirs at all. Charitable planning is not just about reducing taxes. It is about deciding, deliberately, where part of what you built will go, rather than letting the tax code make that decision for you.

A Charitable Remainder Trust (CRT) provides income to you or a beneficiary for a set number of years, with the remaining assets going to the causes you care about. A Charitable Lead Trust (CLT) works in the opposite direction: the charity receives income first, and remaining assets pass to heirs, often at a reduced gift tax value. A Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) is the most straightforward option: contribute assets now, take the immediate deduction, and direct grants on your own timeline.

The Capitol itself is a useful reminder here. The building exists because a generation of Iowans decided to construct something that would outlast them, and invested in it accordingly. The best charitable strategies work the same way. They are not acts of sacrifice. They are acts of intention.

What weathers time

The Senate chamber's original 1884 interiors are still intact today. The House chamber, destroyed in the 1904 fire, was rebuilt from scratch. The electrical system has been replaced. The heating and ventilation have been overhauled. The dome regilded five times. Each intervention was an act of stewardship, not an admission that the original structure had failed. The building endures because each generation understood its responsibility to tend what was left to them.

The most common structural failure I encounter is not a plan that was designed badly. It is a plan that was designed well and then left exactly as it was while everything around it changed. A business sale. A marriage or divorce within the family. A move across state lines. A significant increase in asset value. The birth of grandchildren who did not exist when the plan was written. Each of these is a renovation trigger: not a reason to tear the structure down, but a reason to bring in the right people, assess what still holds, and make deliberate changes before the gap between the plan and reality becomes a liability.

“You do not honor a well-built structure by leaving it exactly as you found it. You honor it by tending it.”

Chris Benda, Founder, Benda & Co.

Pour the foundation Know your full taxable estate. Understand your state’s rules. Make annual exclusion gifts. Set the cost basis strategy. Build on solid ground before placing weight on it.	Build the load-bearing walls Put the trusts, entities, and succession structures in place while you have time to design them carefully. These take longer to build than most people expect.	Regild the dome Review the plan when life changes. Don’t wait until the damage is visible from the street. A regular inspection costs far less than a $10 million restoration.

Every great building has a general contractor

The Capitol was not built or maintained by any one person. Multiple architects, artists, structural engineers, and preservationists each brought something the others could not. A fiduciary advisor plays that general contractor role in your wealth plan, coordinating the estate attorney, the CPA, and the overall investment strategy so that each piece is working toward the same outcome rather than pulling in different directions.

One of the most overlooked vulnerabilities is liquidity. Even substantial estates can face serious cash flow problems when most of the wealth is tied up in real estate, a business, or long-term holdings. A well-built plan ensures heirs have accessible funds to cover taxes and expenses without being forced to sell assets under pressure.

That coordination matters more now than it did a year ago. The 2026 exemption increase has opened a meaningful window. But the strategies that take fullest advantage of it, a SLAT, a GRAT, or a valuation-based business transfer, cannot be assembled the week before they are needed. The window to design and build is not the same as the window to use.

Start the conversations before the urgency arrives.

The structure that lasts

The Iowa Capitol catches the light the same way it did in 1886. Nothing about it suggests the failed cornerstone, or the 1904 fire, or the moisture damage accumulating invisibly behind a gold exterior in 2005, or the $10 million it took to address it properly a decade later. From out here, it just looks like a dome. Solid. Gold. Still standing.

Estate planning is not simpler than that. It just feels like it should be, because the product is paperwork rather than stone. But the stakes are the same. A plan designed without enough depth, or left untended after the world around it changes, fails in ways that are just as consequential as a foundation that could not survive an Iowa winter. The difference is that when a building fails, you can see it. When an estate plan fails, your heirs are the ones who find out.

The families that protect the most wealth across generations are not always the ones with the largest estates. They are the ones who treated the plan with the same seriousness they brought to building the wealth in the first place. Intentional. Coordinated. Reviewed every time the world around it changed.

Your estate is not a document to file and forget. It is architecture. And like any structure worth having, it deserves to be maintained by people who understand what they are protecting and why.

The dome doesn't stay gold on its own. Neither does a legacy.

Chris Benda, Founder, Benda & Co.

Chris Benda is an investment adviser representative with Savvy Advisors, Inc. (“Savvy Advisors”). Savvy Advisors is an SEC registered investment advisor. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the speakers and authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Savvy Advisors. Information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but are not assured as to accuracy.

Material prepared herein has been created for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation. Information was obtained from sources believed to be reliable but was not verified for accuracy.‍Savvy Wealth Inc. is a technology company. Savvy Advisors, Inc. is an SEC registered investment advisor. For purposes of this article, Savvy Wealth and Savvy Advisors together are referred to as “Savvy”. All advisory services are offered through Savvy Advisors, while technology is offered through Savvy Wealth. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the speakers and authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Savvy Advisors.