The personal relationships we establish with our clients are the key to the success of our Trusts and Estates practice.  We counsel our clients concerning various aspects of both lifetime wealth transfers and estate planning including business succession planning, sophisticated gifting strategies, charitable gift planning, and exempt organization work.  Our attorneys pride themselves on nurturing client relationships and often work with multiple generations within a family.

Our primary goal in estate planning is to determine and address our clients’ long-term objectives for their families.  We work closely with our clients and their financial, insurance and accounting advisors to develop an estate plan that carries out those objectives in the most tax efficient manner.  Our attorneys serve our clients in all of the following areas:

• Wills and trusts
• Closely held businesses
• Estate, gift, generation-skipping and income tax advice
• Charitable foundations
• Will, estate and trust litigation
• Pre-Marital and Post-Marital agreements
• Dynasty Trusts
• Estate and trust administration
• Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts
• Guardianships and Conservatorships proceedings
• International estate planning
• Medicaid/Medicare planning

The complexity and uncertainty of the current federal and state tax laws requires great care be taken when creating a lifetime wealth transfer or estate plan.  Our trusts and estates attorneys draw upon the firm’s substantial experience in corporate law, litigation, family law and residential and commercial real estate in servicing the varied needs of our clients.

The department is active in all phases of estate and trust administration.  Our attorneys work in concert with individual and corporate executors and trustees to ensure that they properly fulfill their duties in a cost-effective manner.  This assistance includes inventorying and valuing assets, maintaining books and records, preparing state and federal tax returns, arranging for the distribution of income and principal assets and preparing all documents, including accountings, which are required by the Probate Courts.  Our goal is to relieve our clients of the substantial day to day burdens of estate and trust administration, so they can focus on more significant issues.

The Firm’s elder law practice provides a wide range of services to the elderly and their families, including long term care planning, qualification for Title XIX (Medicaid) benefits, preservation and protection of assets, and counseling regarding conservatorships for the elderly and persons with disabilities.