Trusts and Estates

We provide tax and estate planning for a wide range of individuals including executives, closely held business owners, entrepreneurs and wealthy families.

Our services include:

Preparing and implementing revocable trusts designed to use available estate, gift and generation-skipping exemptions
Advising on traditional estate planning structures
Providing advanced advice on an array of transfer techniques designed to reduce taxes and protect assets, including family partnerships, grantor annuity trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, charitable trusts, trusts for children, insurance trusts and generation-skipping trusts.

For individual and corporate fiduciaries administering trusts and estates, we assist in areas including:

Multi-state probate legal services
Preparation of probate and trust accounts
Preparation and filing of federal and state estate tax returns.
Advanced post-mortem planning, including the use of disclaimers, extensive analysis of the timing of tax payments and fiduciary income tax planning

We also help owners of closely held and family owned businesses with the various issues that arise in the transition of the business from one generation to the next as well as with the adoption of tax saving structures for the ultimate disposition of the business. Working closely with members of our Tax Group and Corporate Group, we provide critical assistance to owners of closely held businesses to minimize the estate and gift tax impact of a transaction.

Representative Matters

Obtained preliminary injunction for a family trust in litigation over corporate control of business in which the trust had a substantial investment.

Obtained favorable settlement for the family of man who challenged estate of family matriarch based on claims of undue influence and lack of testamentary capacity where matriarch changed her estate plan, which had historically been split equally between her two sons, to leave the majority of her estate to her surviving son, shortly after the man, the matriarch's only other child, pre-deceased her.

Obtained favorable settlement of will contest on behalf of sole heir to mother's estate based on lack of testamentary capacity and insane delusions where mother, with long-standing and well-documented history of mental illness, did not provide for the heir in her estate plan.

Obtained favorable settlement for family-member trustees in pursuing claims of breach of fiduciary duty against corporate trustee.