Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Terry Register- CEO of Capsur Tax and Estate Planning – Tax Planning for Future Generations

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

As President of Capsur Tax and Estate Planning, Terry Register leads with a clear and focused mission: to help business owners, high-income professionals, high-net-worth individuals, and closely held corporations navigate the complexities of tax planning, retirement strategy, estate structuring, and legacy preservation. Through personalized service and strategic insight, Terry delivers solutions designed to build long-term financial confidence and multigenerational impact.Terry began his distinguished career at Fidelity Union, earning “Rookie of the Year” honors and qualifying for the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) in his first year. He later joined American Defender Life, where he consistently ranked among the top ten producers nationwide and earned annual recognition in the President’s Cabinet.He founded Capsur with a vision to offer programs and planning strategies that empower individuals and businesses to reach their financial, retirement, and legacy goals. Today, he continues to work collaboratively with professionals and clients across the country on high-value joint cases that demand tailored and sophisticated solutions.Terry’s leadership and production achievements have earned him national recognition, but his commitment to service goes beyond the business world. He has served as a trustee on the Endowment Committee at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, a Corporate Board Member for G.R.A.C.E. Christian School in Raleigh, and an active supporter of charitable missions, including the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the Zachary Taylor Orphanage in Kenya, and Uttermost Ministries.A devoted husband, father, and grandfather, Terry resides in Raleigh, NC, with his wife. He is a longtime member of Bayleaf Baptist Church, where he has served on the Personnel Committee and continues to invest in his faith and community.Learn more: https://www.capsurtaxandestateplanning.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-terry-register-ceo-of-capsur-tax-and-estate-planning-tax-planning-for-future-generations

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have back with us Terry Register, who's the CEO of Capture Tax and Estate Planning, and we'll be talking about how to secure your legacy and how to secure your legacy and have tax planning for future generations. Terry, welcome back to the program.

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. You're welcome. I think that it's so amazing to think, you know, when you think about retirement, it's one of those things that is way up into the future. And so let's save and strive and grow money. And then we got to make sure that we've got enough money for us to live in retirement. What day do you retire and how long are you going to live. Nobody knows that. The good Lord's going to set those days in motion, but we have to make sure we've got enough money to get to the end. And now we're talking about something else. And this is so special because we're looking at legacy planning. We're looking at passing on what we have left. We don't want to just die with two cents in our, you know, bank account or

retirement account. We want to have so much that we're making sure that our heirs have money. And now we want to talk about here securing that legacy where do you start when you're talking to your clients about securing the legacy what does that mean and how does tax planning fit into that picture that picture you know when you think about it everybody wants to do well and so when you start looking at the people that are your family and yourself you know most people don't want to talk about it. They don't like it. It's very uncomfortable because so many people don't want to deal with death. But the thing is, is that I think that it helps the government, you know, for the people

that have errors that are doing well, you know, the biggest problem that they're going to have is that the day that somebody dies, the government will tell you, you've got nine months to pay them. And, you know, they don't like to do payment plans. They will do a payment plan. but they don't like doing employment plan. So the thing is, is that if you have airs and they're doing well, and especially everybody is listening in here, are you going to inherit anything?

You know, I ask that question to everybody I interview, and so a lot of them will say, you know, yes, I'm going to inherit something, but, you know, there may be a tax bill that they don't know, and they're not expecting. But let's go one step further. There's a lot of people, you know, they say, hey, look, my mama's going to give me

her house. And so those things are good, but if you start doing a little bit of planning for your legacy and think about it, you know, how is that house titled? I'm not an attorney. You know, just looking at it at a high altitude and just looking down, you know, how much is the house worth? And so here's what's happening. So a man and a woman are married, and so right now the government can't come and take your house. But if one of those spouses dies and they leave the there. You know, it's called the spend down provision. We won't get real deep into it today.

But see, all of a sudden, they're going to make you spend down things. And so any asset, right now in our current law, anything that's been moved over the last five years, they can come and pull it back in. So you need to have an elder care of attorney if you've got some of these issues to deal with. And so for the first time, think about it. How many baby boomers are out there today? And so a lot of people don't think about it.

So I think I'm going to inherit my mom and dad's house. Well, I don't know here today, a 4,000 square foot house brand new is costing around $800 to a million. And so if we look at people selling the house to pay the bills, well, let's say that they didn't sell the house. And one of them had to go into a nursing home. So we need to have a program to give us living benefits. in the state of Washington, they passed a law that actually goes out,

Mike, and tells them that they got to have a policy or they're going to make them pay an extra tax. And they might not even be living in that state. And so what I tell people to do is that we need to look at doing some asset protection from your statement there.

And so when we look at, you know, we don't want to leave a burden to our heirs, but, you know, Will Rogers says, I ain't worried about the return on my money, I'm worried about the return of my money. Remember, one, Buffett said, rule number, there's two rules. Number one, don't lose money. Number two, remember rule number one.

The, so we don't want, we don't lose money. Yeah, that's great. That's awesome. Well, that's easier said than done as, as, as we know. But it's just so, what you just said there on securing legacy is just spectacular. And I just think that a lot of times people are short-sighted and they just think, I need X number of dollars so I can retire. But we're looking at a much bigger picture than that. So talk a little bit about the next step.

Once you start having your clients understanding how that works, what are some of the things they need to be thinking about? Because I know that you mentioned one thing with, you know, living benefits that makes me think about, well, long-term care. that, you know, 70% of people are going to deal with some kind of long-term care. And that can be a penny or two of cost. And that could tap into that legacy. So what are some of those ways that you're leveraging that legacy to benefit the family versus the government? Great question. And so when you look at it, you've got to think about how you can leverage your legacy to benefit your family rather than the government.

Now, the thing is, I'm not saying don't pay your taxes, because everybody has to pay taxes. But when we look at it, simply put, there's ways to leverage it. Life insurance is a dirty word to some people. You know, when you say life insurance, a lot of them will turn out. Think about so many people today, they haven't really reviewed it. They have changed policies. And so I was talking to a doctor, and he was 63 years old. And see, don't wait until you're 63-year-old to do it.

planning because see that's the problem with legacy you know your legacy planning can start today and see when we start educating our children we want to educate our children to know how to do this too but when we look at it there's a program called living benefits and so the with the introduction of iU well we can solve a lot of challenges in retirement the it can be income it can be the long-term care it can be living benefits, but we put them all in one product. So since the proceeds and the loans under Section 7702 are tax-free, they're tax-free to both you and your heirs and your benefits. There's new programs out there that if you know that are available, that will cover a

couple of things, and I'd like to just hit a couple of topics that people don't think about. So when they think about losing a spouse, it's traumatic enough to lose the spouse, especially if it's a spouse that's working. But when we lose the spouse, and then now if I had to go into a nursing home and they do this, I have a stress test on my website. And I challenge everybody in here that's listening to this, when we talk about it later, go to my website and take the stress test and see what your score is. Because it asks tough questions without me being there where that you can look and see where you want to be at. And so when we look at helping you and your family and with those benefits, see, some people

haven't ever heard of chronic illness. They have a dreaded disease. Think about it. If you have a life insurance policy right now and you got the old kind, not the new kind, and something was to happen to you and you had a heart attack, you wouldn't get anything. If you had a stroke, you wouldn't get anything. If you had cancer, you wouldn't do it. Well, see, on these new programs that we got for legacy planning, they have specific.

classified diseases on there. So not only would you do it, the doctor I talked to yesterday, he was concerned. And this doctor has 12,000 patients and he has 600 employees. And so the thing is that you would think a doctor, 63 years old, would have already done this planning. When I showed it to him, he goes, you know, man, I tell you what, I had a misconceived idea. I never knew insurance could do that. I don't need life insurance because I didn't want my, if I die, my kids don't need no

money. And see, that's what a lot of people have done. They don't think their kids need that bad. Well, the other thing is you mentioned life insurance is a, you know, dirty word to some people. Oh, I've got plenty of life insurance. Well, do you have plenty? Is it the right kind? Is it just term? And now you are going to need to re-up that term in about five or eight years because you got it 10 or 15 years ago. And then in five or eight years, your health might have changed. You're, you know, 10, 12 years older than when you got it, and now the rates have gone through the roof. So I think those are things that people need to at least go, listen, let's at least check. And if we review what kind of life insurance you have and you're good to go, then we check the box and high five.

If not, wouldn't you want to know it now sooner than rather than later? And I want to preface my question with that, but ask the question, isn't there some types of insurance out there that is going to be providing? the death benefit? That's what people think of the life insurance. When you die, you get X number of dollars. But like the doctor that you just mentioned, oh, my kids don't need money, so I don't need the life insurance. But the problem is, there are certain benefits that are living benefits that he's going to miss out on if you don't have a properly structured life insurance policy now. Talk a little bit about some of those benefits, how you can access those for long-term care, cash growth and things like that.

Well, I want to say one other thing, you know, you hit a nerve when you said that. One of the things I want to say before I answer that question, if you may, allow me, is that people have old policies. I get phone calls every day from people that their kids are saying, hey, I bought this policy 20 years ago. And 20 years ago, the interest was 6% or 7% on these policies. Today they're getting 2% or 3%. So they think that these policies are going to pay out,

and they have benefits, but a lot of them don't have the benefits that they need. And so as we start looking at it, you know, you've got to review all these old policies and see a lot of the agents ain't into business anymore. You know, the average age of a broker is 60 years of age in America. So some of them have retired. Some of them are not around anymore. So we've got to go out and do this. I apologize.

guys, I got off on a little tangent there. No, that's a really great point. That's a really great point. Yeah, I think that, you know, you might think you've checked your box like I've got insurance, but is it the right kind? Is it the best for you? All of those things. The question is talk about some of the good policies that are out there today that provide

more than just death benefit, that provide living benefits. And what are some of those living benefits that can include, you know, tax-free, cash growth as well as some access for long-term care without having to set up a separate long-term care policy. Well, you know, when you start doing this type of planning, there's really three things that you need to be looking at. You need to be looking at the person you're talking to, the company, there's 95 probably plus A plus X ratey companies, so you want to make sure you've got a good.

company. And then you want to make sure that policy is doing what you want it to do. So we want those benefits, but some people don't care about the different benefits that they've got. Most of the times I want, I want to pay if I live, die, or quit. So I want to be able to have something that is flexible that allows me to put money in and take money out, put money in. If I have a bad month, I've had some people that teach what they call the decreasing need theory. I don't buy into that, and there's some people on the radio doing that, talking about it. But see, the thing is, is that as we know and look at it, think about what we're having to pay today in taxes.

And so how are we going to pay our regular taxes? How are our kids going to pay it? I know a friend of mine had a beach home. He's going to try to give it to his kids, and so I had a guy that was going to give him his life insurance. So they gave them the life insurance, which could be transferable, but who's going to pay for it? So we also want to look at those benefits and how, what is our, horizon. Some of these new policies, I was looking at it yesterday and we call it the Great Depression

interest rate. So if you look at S&P index and you look at all the way back to the Great Depression, you know, it's had a higher interest rate than what, you know, a lot of people are getting on their money today. So is it a current policy? Do I have a floor? And what that means is, is that when I put money into this, every policy that we sell has a floor. So there's no loss and none of your money's in the market. We buy what we call options and I don't want to get into the weeds on that, but what the options do is that the options say what the interest rate is. So I just had a client yesterday that put money in with me a year ago. The market was paying X and yesterday it was 5973. So the cap was 9.73. He made

over 30%, but he only got 9.75 because he wanted to have a zero downside. So our money's safe. It's not in the market. We've got a top rated company. We've got our living benefits. It's transferable if we die to our kids.

They get the money income tax free. And so the thing is, is that we still have control because we own the policy. So we give up no control. And all we did, we might take that money and how many people are listening said oh i got a cd and i just wanted to leave that money to my kids i ain't going to spend it i'm just going to leave the money and give it to my kids

yeah but you could be giving them so much more if you put some strategies in place up front that's exactly right which would they rather have a hundred thousand dollar cd or a two hundred fifty thousand dollar paid up policy and you and you put the same amount of money we talked about it before on the other shows, we got the same about a money, but we just had it in a different position. Yeah. Yeah. No more risk to you.

It's just, is it in this bucket or that bucket? And who benefits your family? And I think that's the thing. It's like, wouldn't you want to know? If there was something better out there, wouldn't you want to know? You can always say no to that. You can always go, oh, you know, thanks for explaining it. But no, fine, but at least you need to know.

let's talk a little bit about something that I know with family dynamics and whatnot. What about charitable strategies like donor giving and family foundations? What are some of those things that you can guide your clients on to talk to the right, you know, tax professional, but how do those things benefit clients? Great question. A lot of people have different ways that they can do some things. And one of the things that we want to see and let them to look at is that who's, they want to give the money to first? You know, and so the thing is, is that do they have

enough funds today so that they can actually contribute into a charitable remainder trust to a donor advice fund? And so we do a lot of donor advised funds. So instead of losing money in your retirement, we can show you how to not do a Roth and put the money into a donor advice fund, take a tax right off, have 100% of the income, it'll go to generations, and then you can give it to a charity of your choice. I had a man that had $3 million of stock, and Lowe's in North Carolina, that's a building place. We had the guy putting the money into Lowe's, and one of the things that was great about this is I sat down and talked to his wife, and here's what I ask everybody when I sit down and talk to him. I say, let me ask you a question. Had you know,

ever met me, what would you do? And he says, well, you know, we only need $36,000 a year to put money into. So all we're going to do is we're just going to take our Social Security and we're going to leave that $3 million of stock to our $3. I said, so each one of them is going to get a million dollars for the next, you know, divided by three, you know, times three, million times three million. And so when they get the money, they're going to have to pay at least 15% tax. So they're going net 850,000. So that's what you're going to do. I said, Mama, how many grandchildren you got?

She said five. I said, on $36,000 a year, how are you going to take them to Disney World? Yep. She said, well, you pay $36,000 just for tickets alone, it seems like. You're exactly right. And so I said, no. And so he says, she says, I don't know. I said, well, look, I don't want to give you an example today.

I want to give you a week. So I caught them in a week and I said, look, I'm coming over there tomorrow. Is it all right? I got there and I said, hey, look, so y'all thought about, do y'all think of any other thing that y'all could do? He said, no. I said, look, I don't want you to say anything. I want you to listen to me because I've set this thing up, and here's what I did.

I took the $3 million that they had. I took $600,000 of that money, and I put it into a single premium immediate annuity, and I bought a $3 million last-to-die policy for a little over $60,000 for six pay. So now when you die, each one of your kids are going to get a million dollars income tax free. I'm going to take the other $2.4 million because you gave that stock to our charity, which is the 501c3, and we put that money into the pooled income fund. And so now that $2.4 million at 5% generates $120,000 a year the rest of their life. When the daddy or the husband dies, the wife's going to get $120.

When they die, it goes another generation to each one of those three girls. Each one of them get 40,000, 40,000, and 40,000. So instead of them living on 36,000, and giving the kids $3 million, they get $8.50 and $850,000, they're going to get $120,000. I looked at mom and I said, Mama, what do you think? She says, if he don't do this, we're going to have a problem. I said, why would you say that? She said, because you just showed me how I could get an extra $120,000.

thousand dollars, my girls still get there a million. I lose the stock, but then at the end of the generation, I can give that $2.4 million to my church and help out a lot of people in ministries. And I said, if that's what you want to do, yes, that's what we could do. She said, that's what I want to do. And that was done. See, it was another example of thinking outside the box because, see, they thought they were wealthy. They thought they had plenty of money. Well, what you just described there of what we've said several times. It's your same amount of money. You're just putting it in this bucket, that bucket, and there's no guarantees in life. Like, we know that. But that $3 million in stock, what if three years, two years, five years from now, the stock underlying stock plummets? Well,

now you don't have three million to give to your kids. So when you put it into some of these safe places, now all of a sudden it's going to work and it's not going to be impacted by volatility and all of that. I just think that those are the kind of things that people just don't realize. It takes someone from the outside looking in. And I know that you do a whole lot of education in your podcast, you're teaching, your videos, and you've got estate planning events. If someone is interested in learning a little bit more about some of your events that you're doing, what is the best way that they can do that on your website?

Well, I tell you what, it's great that you said that, because if you go to our website and click on events, there's a complimentary educational event where it talks about estate planning. And so one of the things that everybody's listening to me that we do for free, we give everybody a simple will for free, we give them a power of attorney for free,

and we give them a health power of attorney. All they can do is fiddle out, and, you know, yes, you might want to get a lawyer to look at it, but we'll do all that work for you at no charge. We also got a complimentary event, and so it has different topics. On the one that we're doing right now that you can register for is the one that says estate planning.

And I'm sure that you'll learn some stuff. Now, the thing is that I will warn you that it's about 57 minutes. But the thing is that you can go back and forth and look at it. And so once you do that, then you're prepared to do that. And see, those of you that think you need a trust, we give you an hour of free service on that website there, Take the stress test to see how much you know.

And see, then you'll see where your holes are at in your planning. Yep. Exactly. And no one's going to twist your arm and force you to do anything. But if you then know what you can take advantage of and make some choices that way, at least that way you can be aware. So I think that is just so spectacular, Terry. I'll make sure that we've got that link to your website.

And once again, thank you so much for coming on. It's just been a real pleasure taking advantage of your decades of knowledge in the industry. And I really appreciate it. I look forward to hopefully I can be on your show again. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.