PRACTICE AREAS

The firm’s estates & trusts attorneys provide a full panoply of estate planning and administration services to individuals, entrepreneurs, owners of family businesses, charitable foundations and other nonprofit organizations.  The attorneys strive to meet client needs by preserving current income and assets, minimizing income and transfer tax consequences and optimizing the financial benefit to present and future generations.

Our attorneys have extensive experience in the law of decedents’ estates, trusts, probate and taxation.  Clients are counseled on developing, implementing and administering comprehensive lifetime and testamentary estate and tax planning strategies that carefully balance personal, wealth accumulation and administrative concerns.  Matters such as the succession of a family business, asset protection and philanthropy are routinely addressed.

Our attorneys work closely with business owners, corporate executives and their families in designing and selecting various alternatives under pension, profit sharing and other corporate benefit plans.  Clients are advised on income and wealth transfer tax implications and on the repositioning of assets so that insurance and other beneficiary designations are in harmony with their estate plan.

Because successful estate and trust planning focuses on the unique requirements of each case, attorneys design individually tailored revocable and irrevocable trust instruments, wills, durable powers of attorney, advance health care directives and other documents necessary to carry out the client’s wishes and objectives.

The firm is sensitive to those family members who must serve as executors or trustees at a time when they might have difficulty focusing on fiduciary matters.  Our attorneys are skilled in counseling personal representatives, trustees and other fiduciaries on such matters as post-mortem tax planning, valuation and allocation of assets, distributions to beneficiaries, collection of life insurance proceeds and retirement benefit payouts, and the orderly accounting for receipts and disbursements.  The firm’s attorneys are also experienced in the preparation of income, gift, inheritance and estate tax returns.

Our attorneys represent clients in all types of federal and state tax controversies involving estate, gift generation skipping and income tax matters.  The firm is also equipped to efficiently handle estate and trust-related litigation matters, including will contents, distribution disputes, fiduciary liability actions and guardianships.

The firm is committed to staying up-to-date and informed about leading-edge developments and new trends and techniques in the estate, trust and wealth transfer tax areas.  The firm’s attorneys have significant experience with limited liability partnerships, private annuities and grantor trusts.  Several of our attorneys lecture on these subjects at continuing legal and professional education seminars.