Estate Planning

"Estate planning" is the process of ensuring your family financial health by making certain that your assets are preserved, enhanced and protected during your lifetime and distributed according to your intentions after your death.

If you retain us to do estate planning for you, we first develop a financial statement with you which shows the nature and extent of your assets and their registration. These assets include your real estate, financial assets, business assets and retirement plans and life insurance.

We then ascertain your estate planning objectives. These objectives may be as simple as providing for your family or minimizing estate taxes or as complicated as providing trust for family members with special needs or for charitable beneficiaries.

We then make our recommendations about what documents you need and how your assets should be registered. These documents include Wills, Revocable Trusts, Insurance Trusts, Grantor Retained Annuity and Uni-trusts, Qualified Personal Residence Trusts, Charitable Remainder Annuity and Uni-trusts, Family Foundations, Family Partnerships and many other arrangements. For more information on these type of arrangements see the "Article" section of this site.

After your documents are executed and your assets properly registered, the estate planning process is not over. We periodically advise you of changes in the law that may effect your estate plan by newsletter or personal contact. If you have not reviewed your estate plan within a reasonable amount of time, we will contact you to remind you of the importance of updating your estate plan.

Elder Law

Also included in the estate planning process is a review of who you would like to handle your affairs if you become incapacitated. Therefore, in addition to estate planning, we prepare Powers of Attorney, Advance Directives and Designations of Guardians for Minors. In addition, an important aspect of preserving your wealth is discussion of your health care arrangements in case of incapacity. We are prepared to discuss with the desirability of obtaining nursing home insurance and home health care insurance to defray the cost of these items upon incapacity.

If you have a family member with "special needs", we are experienced in preparing documents that will protect the members of your family without disqualifying them from receiving government benefits.

Trust and Estate Administration

Hand-in-hand with estate planning goes the administration of your estate or trust upon your death. We not only have attorneys who are trained to assist you but also paralegals who devote all of their time to estate and trust administration and who are available to answer any questions during the process.

At the beginning of an estate or trust administration, we meet with your family and the administrator of your estate and trust to discuss the administration process in detail. We follow their initial discussion with a detailed letter or "blueprint" of the estate administration process which outlines all of the steps and who will be responsible for each item in the estate administration. We either prepare or assist in the preparation of necessary tax returns and assist the administrator in settling claims of creditors, paying administration expenses, dealing with tax agencies, making distributions and establishing trusts.

Tax Preparation

Although we would be more than happy to deal with and work with your tax preparer, we provide a full range of tax preparation services, performed "in house" by our attorneys and staff. We prepare individual income tax returns (1040), federal estate tax returns (706), federal gift tax returns (709), fiduciary income tax returns (1041) and most state returns. We find that providing these services to our clients give us yearly contact which facilitates better estate and financial planning and "one-stop-shopping" for our clients.

Fiduciary Services

Although we are pleased to work with a corporate fiduciary or a member of your family and guide them through the estate and trust administration process, we can also provide fiduciary services to our clients who need a professional but would prefer to deal with an individual rather then a corporation. In addition, naming a member of our firm as the Personal Representative or Trustee will allow members of your family to continue any investment advisory relationship that you may have since we do not provide investment advice. Some important functions that we provide as a fiduciary include meeting with the beneficiary and determining the beneficiary's financial needs, helping to chose an investment advisor and working with this investment advisor to achieve the investment objectives, making discretionary distributions decisions and balancing the needs of the current beneficiaries and the remainder beneficiaries.

Real Estate

Some of the real estate services that we provide are drafting and reviewing contracts, acting as settlement agent, issuing title insurance and preparing closing documents needed for a sale and purchase and a mortgage. In addition, we are experienced in handling simultaneous and non-simultaneous like-kind exchanges and we can provide Intermediary Services.

Probate and Trust Litigation

The potential of an inheritance brings out the worst in some people. As a result, we can assist you and your family in resolving conflicts before the Courts.

These conflicts can range from the academic such as obtaining instructions from a Judge regarding the interpretation of documents, to the emotional such as claims of "undue influence", "lack of testamentary capacity", and "tortuous interference". We are experienced in handling both the defendant and the plaintiff side of these types of cases.

In the case of an heir or beneficiary who is attempting to set aside a Will or Trust for lack of testamentary capacity, undue influence or tortuous interference, we will consider handling the case on a "contingent fee" arrangement so that you will only pay an attorney's fee only if there is a recovery.