WEALTH & SUCCESSION PLANNING

Trusted Experience and a Customized Team Approach to Wealth & Succession Planning

Our perspective is broader than traditional estate planning. We build a customized, inter-disciplinary team to look at both the business side and the personal side of each issue to develop comprehensive strategies that give you peace of mind and answer your most pressing questions, such as:

• Who should own and manage your business or other assets after your death?
• What role should your members of your family play in managing your business and other assets, as compared to outsiders?
• How much flexibility do you want to give your successor decision makers?
• How should you manage family wealth for future generations?
• How to meet your personal liquidity demands during life and at death?

Tailored Services to Meet Your Needs

We know that one size does not fit all, so we customize our team and our services to fit your specific needs. Our core services include planning, administration, and audits and disputes.

Planning Services

Effective planning can help you achieve your business and personal goals while reducing tax liability and other costs for future generations. We provide closely-held business owners, corporate executives, and other high-net-worth individuals and their families with comprehensive planning services, including:

1. Identifying and implementing tax-effective means of transferring wealth to beneficiaries, whether during life or at death, including advising on estate, gift, generation-skipping transfer, and fiduciary income considerations.
2. Managing closely-held businesses, including succession planning from identifying the successor business leaders to reorganizing businesses to facilitate succession to effecting the actual transfer of ownership.
3. Managing the family's personal business, from assistance with structuring family offices to providing legal support to family offices for all personal family matters.
4. Structuring charitable planning initiatives, including charitable lead trusts, charitable remainder trusts, private foundations, donor-advised funds, and loans and gifts to public charities.
5. Art and luxury asset planning, from acquisition to use for collateralized loans to tax-efficient transfers and sales.
6. Incapacity planning, including revocable trusts and financial and health care powers.

Administration Services

Our work does not necessarily stop with the creation of a plan or even after a client’s death. Our services in administration include:

• Assisting with probate.
• Counseling on post-mortem planning, such as qualified disclaimers.
• Administering estates and trusts, including document preparation and interpretation, fiduciary investment issues and matters arising under the Uniform Trust Code.
• Identifying funds to satisfy estate tax liabilities and to facilitate ongoing business operations during the period of administration of a business owner’s estate.
• Assisting in the preparation of estate, gift and fiduciary income tax returns.
• Administering private foundations.

Audits and Dispute Services

When faced with an audit, you need an experienced advisor who can help you navigate and resolve tax controversies. When litigation is inevitable, we represent corporate and individual fiduciaries, charitable foundations and estates and trusts in both administrative and court proceedings. Our dispute resolution experience includes resolving controversies with the IRS and other taxing authorities, as well as addressing disputes among beneficiaries or between beneficiaries and fiduciaries or between closely-held business owners.