Practice Areas
Estate Planning
Our goal is to assist our clients in preparing an estate plan which (1) efficiently passes on generational wealth; (2) minimizes potential family conflict; and (3) reduces the tax burden on the client's estate. Our clients often use revocable trusts and pour over wills as their basic estate planning documents. When properly utilized, revocable trusts help the client's assets avoid going through probate upon death, provide for a more efficient and streamlined estate and trust administration process and provide confidentiality for the family's assets. Within the revocable trust, we often design additional trusts for spouses, children and grandchildren to be established upon the death of the client. ​​​​​
Tax Saving Trusts
We often utilize many different types of trusts to assist our clients in reducing federal estate and gift taxes. Dynasty trusts are one of the most popular trusts we recommend for client's to pass on generational wealth to multiple generations of a family. In addition we also prepare credit shelter trusts, marital trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), spousal lifetime access trusts (SLATs), qualified personal residence trusts (QPRTs), life insurance trusts and various types of charitable trusts, just to name a few. Each client has different goals and we tailor the use of trusts to fit that specific client's needs.
Corporate Law
As part of the estate planning process, we incorporate many different types of companies for our clients such as limited liability companies (LLCs), partnerships, S corporations and professional associations. Depending on the client's needs, we have experience incorporating in multiple states, such as Florida, Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming. We often utilize these companies when gifting because of the favorable valuations we are able to obtain using business valuation experts who apply various discounts to the value of the stock.
Taxation
We advise our clients on many tax issues associated with their estate plans. Given possible major changes to the estate and gift tax laws, tax planning as part of one's estate plan has never been more important. Our goal is to legally reduce the client's tax burden while meeting the other various issues that may be facing the family. We always recommend our clients work with a competent certified public account (CPA) for additional tax advice.
​Probate and Trust Administration
After a client dies, we assist the family with the trust administration and/or probate process. We represent trustees and personal representatives, both individual and corporate. Our goal is always to administer the client's trust or estate as efficiently as possible. We attempt to mitigate any family disputes through negotiation and mediation rather than litigation.
Charitable Giving
Many of our clients are charitably minded and we assist them with making those charitable gifts. We have established family foundations for a number of families who wish to create a legacy of charitable giving that their children and grandchildren can continue. We set up numerous types of charitable trusts and work with the individual charities on how best to implement the client's charitable goals.