Estate Planning & Wealth Management

The lawyers of the Firm’s Estate Planning and Wealth Management Group provide a comprehensive and integrated approach to meeting clients’ estate planning, tax and wealth management needs. Always mindful of the impact our services have not only on our client but the client’s family, we approach each engagement with the intention of establishing a long-term relationship as counselor to the client and the client’s family. In coordination with the Firm’s other practice areas, this practice group counsels clients on the methods for achieving their personal objectives for both the preservation and transfer of wealth while reducing the future impact of income, estate, gift, and generation-skipping taxes that can frustrate these objectives.

Among the range of services offered by the Estate Planning and Wealth Management Group are:

1. General Estate and Asset Protection Planning - Our attorneys represent people from all walks of life and wealth levels in preparing wills, trusts, powers of attorney and other estate planning documents and in providing counsel about asset ownership and protection arrangements.
2. Wealth Transfer Arrangements - We regularly counsel higher wealth clients in the use of grantor-retained annuity trusts, family partnerships and limited liability companies, asset installment sales, qualified personal residence trusts, life insurance and other gift trusts, and a number of other techniques to transfer wealth to family members on a tax-favored basis.
3. Closely Held Business Planning - We work with owners of closely held businesses in developing arrangements for passing management of the business from one generation to the next, in providing for the care of family members who are not involved in the business, in addressing the impact of marriage and divorce on the business, and in addressing the business liquidity needs caused by estate taxes.
4. Planning for Disability and Retirement - We assist individuals in planning distributions from their tax-qualified retirement plans and IRAs, both during life and upon death, in a manner that utilizes the special tax planning opportunities that exist for these arrangements. We also assist families in planning for the care of a disabled family member through the implementation of special needs trusts and other arrangements that properly integrate the use of the family’s assets and government-provided benefits for the disabled person.
5. Charitable Planning - The Group provides counsel to individuals and families in structuring gifts to charities on the most tax-favored basis, in incorporating charitable remainder trusts and other gift arrangements into estate plans, and in creating and operating family foundations and other tax-exempt organizations.
6. Estate and Trust Administration - We provide a full range of estate and trust administration services, including conduct of probate and guardianship proceedings, providing counsel to executors and trustees, preparation of accountings and estate and fiduciary tax returns, and handling all aspects of post-mortem tax and estate distribution planning.

With a strong commitment to service and extensive experience in these various areas of practice, the Estate Planning and Wealth Management Group strives to provide the type of innovative but practical solutions that serve the client’s immediate needs as well as those of future generations.