The attorneys on our Estate Planning (Private Wealth Services) practice team are committed to helping clients create and implement plans for transferring family wealth that fulfill their personal and family objectives, while also working to minimize the impact of gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer taxes. We enjoy working closely with our clients to provide for the financial security of cherished family members and to ensure the careful administration and transfer of homes, businesses, savings and other assets acquired through years of diligent labor and careful investment.
We work closely with our clients’ accountants, insurance representatives and other financial advisors to obtain, review and understand our clients’ relevant financial and personal information, and then recommend incisive planning strategies and documents to implement our client’s objectives. We have extensive experience in drafting wills, all manner of revocable and irrevocable trusts, powers of attorney and medical directives and routinely prepare documents for high net worth clients who have significant tax-planning goals, including wills and trusts designed to fully utilize the client’s estate tax exemption and generation skipping transfer tax exemption.
We also help our clients take advantage of more sophisticated and specialized tax-planning vehicles designed to provide additional tax savings during the client’s lifetime and at death. These vehicles include irrevocable life insurance trusts, family partnerships and LLCs, qualified personal residence trusts, grantor-retained annuity trusts (GRATs), charitable remainder and lead trusts.
Many of our clients own closely-held businesses and we work closely with those clients to develop plans for the effective and efficient transfer of the business to family or non-family members. This planning might involve restructuring or recapitalizing the business, developing agreements among existing shareholders to provide for the effective transfer of ownership and control of the business, the creation of buy-sell arrangements to provide for the prearranged sale of an interest upon death of an owner, and evaluation of alternatives for funding the purchase of an interest, including creative uses of life insurance where appropriate.
Our team represents executors and heirs in the proper administration of decedents’ estates and trusts, including tax-planning, governmental filings and compliance with state and local tax agencies, the IRS and local clerks and commissioners of accounts. We routinely advise and represent clients with respect to tax appeals, litigation and audits.
Unfortunately, many times after the death of a family member, disputes arise among members of the family, and often with non-family members, as to the proper administration of the decedent’s estate and property. Such disputes often involve will contests and complaints of undue influence or lack of capacity. Our attorneys are very experienced in the negotiation and litigation of such disputes on behalf of executors, trustees, advisors and both individual and charitable beneficiaries.
Our Estate Planning services include:
Representative engagements:
- Representation of a chief executive officer of a New York Stock Exchange-traded company in connection with structure and documentation of his estate plan, including creation and drafting revocable and irrevocable trusts, formation of a private family foundation, insurance planning, charitable planning, asset-protection planning and personal equity investments
- Tax analysis and advice to retired bank officer contemplating multimillion-dollar distribution of employer stock from qualified retirement plan
- Formation of family investment company for real estate investor for use in asset-protection, management-succession and family gifting strategies
- Advice and assistance to real estate development family in formation and operation of private family foundation to fund scholarships and overseas mission trips
- Structuring and documentation of complex buy-sell arrangement for successful entrepreneur involving documentation of company board of advisors and organization of insurance LLC
- Administration of complex estate of deceased business owner involving foreign real estate holdings, foreign trusts and overseas accounts, negotiation and settlement of substantial income tax liabilities arising out of tax shelter activity, preparation and filing of federal and multi-state estate tax returns, business valuation and related issues
- Tax analysis and structuring of grantor-retained annuity trusts and generation-skipping trusts for successful entrepreneur as part of start-up planning for new venture
- Tax analysis and structuring of charitable remainder trusts for real estate investor as part of disposition of real estate holdings
- Tax and estate planning for numerous corporate executives integrating aspects of their insurance arrangements, stock holdings and stock options, employee benefits, and private equity investments