5Stones
Private planning for international families, wherever they choose to live.
We design the structure that holds a family's wealth together across every country it touches, and place the U.S. life insurance that sustains it from one generation to the next. For families who intend to make the United States home, we plan the years before the move as well.
The Practice
A family's success rests on many things: its enterprises, its investments, its values and the people who carry them forward. A trust and the right insurance replace none of them. They are what allow all of them to endure.
Seven Headwinds
Whatever a family has built, it meets the same seven headwinds across the generations. A trust and the right insurance are how it meets them with foresight rather than by chance.
Wherever a family lives, its wealth rarely sits in one country. We bring its counsel in every jurisdiction into a single, ordered plan, and for a family preparing to settle in the United States, we set the sequence of the years before it arrives.
We design and place the policies a family's plan is built upon, held within its trust from the outset and placed with carriers accustomed to families of international standing.
The structure determines what the policy can achieve. The policy determines what the structure can sustain. They are designed together.
The Role of Life Insurance
For families of significant wealth, life insurance is seldom about protection alone. It is a source of liquidity the family can call upon throughout its life, for whatever it chooses, and again at the moment one generation gives way to the next, with the advantage of tax protection throughout.
Capital the family can call upon whenever it chooses: to seize an opportunity, support the next generation, or simply hold in reserve.
When a generation passes, liquidity arrives precisely when it is needed, so nothing of value need be sold in haste.
Properly structured, it is sheltered as its value grows, when the family draws upon it, and when it passes to the next generation.
Owned by the family's trust, the policy passes to the next generation intact.
Each generation renews the family's capital, so it carries forward undiminished.
The Architecture
Our Approach
We begin with the family itself: where it lives, what it holds, and what it wishes its wealth to accomplish.
The policy is then designed to fit that picture, at the size and for the purpose the family's plan requires.
An Illustration
Most of the world exchanges financial account information automatically under the Common Reporting Standard. The United States stands apart, operating its own framework under FATCA. For internationally connected families, that distinction shapes where assets are reported and where U.S. estate situs exposure can arise. Map a footprint below to see the picture and how a coordinated U.S. structure may change it.
Educational illustration only. The frameworks above are summarized in general terms and do not reflect the law of any specific jurisdiction or any family's facts. Strategic asset location is about lawful, fully reported planning. It is never about avoiding reporting obligations, which remain due in every relevant jurisdiction. Confirm all treatment with qualified legal and tax counsel.
An Illustration
A simplified model of how disciplined funding into a properly structured U.S. policy may accumulate cash value and a tax advantaged death benefit over time. Move the inputs to explore the shape of the strategy. These are hypothetical figures, not a projection of any specific product.
Hypothetical and illustrative only. This is not a policy illustration, an offer, or a projection of any specific product. It assumes a constant crediting rate and a flat annual internal cost, and ignores taxes, rising insurance costs, surrender charges, and the sequence of returns. Loans off models a maximum death benefit design; loans on models a minimum non-MEC design that frees cash value for income, drawn as the largest level policy loan sustainable to the projection age. Actual results vary materially by carrier, product, health, funding, and market performance. Review any policy with its full carrier illustration and your own advisors.
Coordination
A family of international standing is served by distinguished advisors in several countries, each expert in their own part. 5Stones holds the whole, so that every one of them works from the same understanding, in the proper order.
We set the sequence, bring forward what cannot wait, and see each step through, so the family's attention remains on the decisions only it can make.
The Execution Team
One counterpart, one plan, and every advisor working from the same account of the family.
Estate planning, trust structures, and legal frameworks.
Independent oversight, fiduciary expertise, and ongoing administration.
Local expertise, regulatory insight, and on the ground support.
Tax strategy, compliance, and cross border planning.
Investment management, portfolio strategy, and asset allocation.
Underwriting, policy issue and service, with 5Stones placing the policy.
Residency, relocation, and pre immigration timing across jurisdictions.
Long standing relationships remain exactly as they are. Where a role is unfilled, we introduce counsel of the appropriate calibre.
The Engagement
Every engagement proceeds in the same sequence, and nothing begins until the family has agreed to it.
The planning conversations that apply to the family, set out in person.
Completed by the family, together and in confidence, through its own portal.
Written in phases, with every element of our compensation disclosed in advance.
Counsel engaged in each jurisdiction, and the policy designed, underwritten and placed.
Reviewed each year, and carried forward as the family and the law evolve.
Private Consultation
Our first conversation is about the family: where it lives, where it is going, and what it intends its wealth to accomplish across the generations.
Introductions through a family's existing advisors are welcome.
Confidential · By introduction or inquiry