Tax and Estate Planning
Planning for the future and anticipating the questions of tomorrow can alleviate the burden of taxes that can challenge – or even cripple – the financial health of commercial or personal clients in the event of a loss. New legislation regarding tax issues and financial matters can pose great challenges to you and your business. Before meeting with us, many of our clients failed to realize how many strategies were available to save costs or to appreciate the risks they took by putting off such a meeting. Our tax law and estate planning practice can help you take advantage of the opportunities out there and avoid what seem to be an ever-growing number of pitfalls.
When our lawyers meet with you, we’ll help you identify the needs of each of your beneficiaries (whether a spouse, partner, minor child or a favored institution). Questions of custody, who may serve as executors, and the use of trusts or wills are just some of the sensitive issues that are best addressed with us before you have an emergency or need.
We routinely prepare and advise clients regarding simple and complex wills, guardianships, trusts, generation-skipping transfers and charitable gifts.
Here is a list of some of the services we’ve provided for past clients:
- Setting up and administering family programs for annual giving;
- Preparing and funding revocable (living) trusts, including pour-over wills and credit shelter trusts, irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs), grantor retained interest trusts (GRITs), grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs) and grantor retained unitrusts (GRUTs) (to transfer property from one generation to the next, while allowing grantors to receive income from the assets during their lifetime);
- Establishing and maintaining qualified personal residence trusts (QPRTs) (to transfer residences to the next generation, while allowing grantors to continue living in their current residence), education trusts (to allow for lifetime and testamentary dispositions towards children’s and grandchildren’s education expenses), charitable remainder unitrusts (CRUTs), charitable remainder annuity trusts (CRATs) and charitable lead trusts (CLUTs/CLATs) (to transfer property or income interests to qualified charities, while retaining certain rights in the gifted property); and
- Setting up and handling family limited partnerships and limited liability companies (a way to isolate potential liability with respect to certain assets, make dispositions of fractional interests to a younger generation, allow continued management and control of assets during the client’s lifetime and provide for continued family ownership and management of the assets) and tax-exempt charitable family foundations (to make lifetime and testamentary deductible charitable bequests and establish a charitable family legacy that can be managed by future generations).
Sound complicated? That is why we are here.
