Estate Planning
We listen and then advise individual clients about strategies for preserving wealth and transferring it to their families, charitable organizations or other beneficiaries. Our clients have diverse backgrounds, professions, family circumstances and asset holdings. They include owners of closely-held businesses, senior executives of publicly-held corporations, individuals with substantial inherited wealth, professionals such as doctors, lawyers and educators, blended families and same sex couples, and extended families with complex asset holdings and family offices. The complex needs of our clients require us to think creatively. We customize estate planning to the individual circumstances of these diverse clients and, most importantly, to their goals and objectives.
Our many years of experience have exposed us to a wide variety of situations and have taught us to be good listeners. Our clients typically want more than strategies to minimize taxes. They seek our judgment about the protection of wealth from creditors, failed marriages and possible fiscal irresponsibility of beneficiaries. They want our perspective on the impact of wealth on younger family members and our suggestions about educating younger generations on wealth management and philanthropy.
Our estate planning work generally leads to the preparation of wills, trust agreements, powers of attorney, and living wills and in appropriate cases, partnership or limited liability company documents. We update our frequently used provisions in these documents regularly to reflect emerging legal and tax issues, and, most importantly, we customize our documents to fit the particular circumstances of each client and the legacy he or she wishes to leave.