Our Trust and Estate Practice Group assists clients as they confront the familial and tax related issues in planning for the management and disposition of property and businesses in the event of disability or death. We also assist personal representatives and trustees in handling their legal responsibilities including probate proceedings, trust administration, accountings, and tax matters.
SERVICES PROVIDED
We pride ourselves on providing a wide range of services to our trust and estate clients from planning for a client’s disposition of property to assisting trustees and personal representatives in administering trusts and decedents’ estates. We put our wealth of experience and perspective to use in order to provide our clients with creative ways to reduce taxes and simplify the administration of assets at death or disability.
Included in our full-range of legal service offerings, we:
- Advise clients and assist them in creating their own unique estate plans in order to meet their unique needs and estate goals
- Draft wills
- Draft wide range of trusts including both testamentary and inter vivos trusts, special needs trusts, intentionally defective grantor trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, qualified terminable interests trusts, charitable remainder unitrusts, and charitable remainder annuity trusts
- Advise clients regarding the ever-changing tax and estate laws, their effects on the client’s current estate plan, and assist clients in revising their current wills and trusts
- Draft and revise powers of attorney and living wills
- Advise on business succession planning and wealth preservation
- Assist with formation of family partnerships and family LLCs and draft the related documents
- Assist clients with succession planning for family owned real estate
- Advise on elder law and Medicaid planning
- Represent corporate and individual personal representatives in estate administration and the probate process
- Represent both corporate and individual trustees in administering trust estates
- Advise on guardianship and conservatorship issues
In addition to these services, attorneys in our practice group represent clients in estate and trust litigation, including probate proceedings, will contests, cases involving will and trust construction and interpretation, and claims against estates and trusts. We regularly advise professional trustees, banks, and trust companies on issues involving estate and trust administration. We also serve as expert witnesses in issues involving trusts and estate practice.
RECENT REPRESENTATIVE MATTERS
- Represented client in probate action to reform an irrevocable testamentary trust to allow retention of sub-trust for disabled beneficiary and to approve a disclaimer that was otherwise time-barred.
- Represented client in developing business succession plan involving an operating business located on significant coastal real estate.
- Represented client in a partition action to settle real estate claims among sibling tenants in common
- Advised client on donation of conservation easement and related endowed trust.