Services
We focus our practice on helping individuals, families, and small businesses preserve wealth and protect assets after unforeseen events, such as disability or lawsuits. Our practice also helps our clients devise strategies to meet other philanthropic and personal goals.
Personal Services
We help our clients create a personalized plan to transfer assets in a way that is timely, cost-effective, and preserves the value of their estate in the event of disability or death. Our basic services may include creating wills, revocable trusts, and powers of attorney for property and health care. Other tools, such as family limited partnerships, may be incorporated as estates grow in value and complexity.
Many clients with charitable intent want to work their giving into larger plans. We help clients donate to charity through the use of charitable foundations, charitable trusts, and other strategies. Charitable planned giving can be incorporated into any estate, large or small, by considering the types of assets owned and the federal tax deductions available.
Many laws provide special accommodations to married couples that are not available to unmarried domestic partners. Laws accommodating marriage range from how to divide property in the event of a divorce to allowing a spouse to make medical decisions in emergency situations. We help unmarried couples create legal documents that can achieve some (though not all) of these rights.
Individuals who have a high-risk of liability (such as certain professionals and small business owners) require extra protection for their assets. We safeguard our clients’ assets from potential creditors by titling assets and implementing specialized trusts.
When our clients wish to transfer wealth, we help assess the tax burden involved in the transaction and consider whether more effective methods exist to accomplish the same goals while minimizing taxes. We also represent clients in audits by the Internal Revenue Service and in tax court should the need arise.
Estate & Trust Administration & Related Litigation
We guide our clients through the process of passing property from the estate and any trusts to the heirs and beneficiaries. This may include advising a trustee on correctly administering a trust, representing the executor of the estate in probate, and preparing any tax returns required to be filed on behalf of the estate or trust. Our firm also represents clients in will and trust contests and guardianship proceedings.
Business Services
Incorporation/Business Formation
When our clients want to start a new business, or create a new legal entity from an existing business, there are a number of legal issues they must navigate. These issues begin with determining what type of entity to form, and in what state to form that entity, and extend into ownership and management issues. We guide our clients through these decisions by explaining how they will influence the client’s ability to do business, including the liability and tax implications of the different options, so that our clients can best determine how to proceed to realize their entrepreneurial goals. We also provide services to help our client keep their corporations in good standing with the appropriate government bodies.
We help small business owners prepare for retirement by creating plans to tax-efficiently pass family-owned businesses to the next generation while assuring owners that they will maintain their desired level of involvement and control over the business they grew through their hard work and dedication.