Take advantage of our decades of experience to help avoid, minimize, or defer income, gift, estate and generation-skipping taxes. Your personal and family needs are unique to you. We will help you develop a customized plan that meets your goals for your legacy. We focus on the personal and tax consequences your estate plan has on your children and grandchildren, as well as your parents. Where appropriate, we provide significant benefits by creating "generation-skipping trusts," which can avoid one or more generations of estate tax and generation-skipping transfer tax, while at the same time providing your beneficiary, such as a child or grandchild, virtually complete enjoyment and control over a gift held by the trust, as well as creditor protection. We can help you safeguard the proceeds of life insurance policies from estate tax, while allowing the surviving spouse and future generations to have the use of the proceeds unreduced by income or estate tax. We can also structure insurance planning so that insurance proceeds will be available to pay estate tax on the death of an individual, but the insurance proceeds and property purchased with these proceeds will not themselves be subject to the estate tax. There is a lot you can do during your lifetime to avoid or reduce income and estate taxes, and if you take steps early enough, the benefits often increase exponentially.
Comprehensive personal planning may include one or more of the following:
- Wills
- Grantor Retained Interest Trusts
- Intentional Grantor Trusts
- Generation-Skipping Trusts
- Family Limited Partnerships
- Crummey Trusts
- Charitable Remainder Trusts
- Charitable Lead Trusts
- Life Insurance Trusts
- Personal Residence Trusts
- Living Trusts
- Powers of Attorney
- Health Care Proxies
- Living Wills
