Don't sleep on Foundations and Trusts. You can contribute to them even during a marriage and you could be trustee and your ex-spouse would not be a creditor.

Don't sleep on Foundations and Trusts. You can contribute to them even during a marriage and you could be trustee and your ex-spouse would not be a creditor. In this topic of shares in your startup though, it is more likely that your Foundation cannot be an owner of it (or maybe a percentage limitation of ownership if you are actively involved in the company), so don't donate shares of that company to that foundation. But for the fiat money earned you can donate unlimited amounts to that, with a 30% annual tax deduction against your annual gross income. This may not be obvious, but its correct that you can't get money out of a foundation aside from 'reasonable salary' which will then be taxed as ordinary income, but you can use the foundation's nest egg to pump the value of other assets you own, as long as you aren't buying and selling direct to the foundation. Ideally an invigorated market will purchase from your personal orders above the price the foundation has pumped the market to with its tax free money. foundation just ends up owning a bunch of the asset from the pump, you personally just have a bunch of short or long term capital gains, which you can again offset by donating to the foundation or offset from prior donations above that prior year's AGI limit. illiquid markets are always ripe for this behavior. Foundations can also support other causes you have in mind, as they were designed for.