Unique Solutions for Your Individual Situation

Proper planning should never be routine. Special situations require a careful, detailed planning process. Our compassionate attorneys are specialists in:

Specialties:

Beneficiaries With Special Needs or Disabilities:

We understand the unique requirements of a special needs child and can help create a plan that provides for your descendents in a way that does not pre-empt any needs-tested benefit programs, such as Medicaid.

Eldercare or Incapacitation:

When loved-ones lose the ability to care for themselves due to age, injury, or illness, proper planning will ensure that a trusted family member or other trusted agent has the power to properly manage their assets and make appropriate health care decisions on their behalf.

End-of-Life Planning:

In addition to making sure that the elderly have all of the appropriate instruments in place (wills, Powers of Attorney, etc.) and assistance in getting all of their affairs in order, we can also implement strategies to offset potentially overwhelming tax liabilities for individuals with a shortened life expectancy.

Non-US Citizens:

Most married taxpayers are not aware that the estate tax marital deduction typically available upon the death of the first spouse is eliminated when the surviving spouse is not a U.S. citizen. A Qualified Domestic Trust can be used to help defer (or possibly eliminate) potential estate tax liabilities, which would otherwise be due at the first spouse's death.

Domestic Partnerships:

Un-married couples are strangers in the eyes of the law. Without a marriage license, and without proper planning and documents, each partner will be unable to make decisions regarding the other partner’s healthcare or financial affairs. Instead, this responsibility will likely fall to a family member under the default provisions of the law. In addition, family members, rather than the surviving partner, will likely receive the assets of the first partner to pass away, since the unmarried couple is not legally each other's heirs.

A proper estate plan includes healthcare and durable financial powers of attorney to ensure that unmarried couples are able to attend to each other's needs while both of them are still living, along with Wills and, possibly, revocable living trusts, to help ensure that their wishes will be followed at each partner's death. Ideally, these documents should be created in conjunction with a domestic partnership agreement to help determine the distribution of assets and custodial issues if the relationship dissolves.

Extended and Blended Families:

Multiple marriages and kids by prior marriages can bring up many issues in the planning process. With open discussion and careful planning, these issues can be properly handled so that all of your beneficiaries are appropriately provided for under your plan.

Gift and Estate Tax Returns:

We can prepare and file gift, estate and generation skipping transfer tax returns in order to help ensure proper tax compliance. Not only is the proper handling of these returns important to avoid IRS conflicts, but also to help keep these taxes to a minimum.

High Net-Worth families:

While the non-tax aspects of your estate plan are most important, the use of specialty tax-driven strategies and transfers can help you control the distribution of your assets while minimizing taxes. Our clients are able to take advantage of all legally available techniques including, among others, the alphabet soup of techniques: ILITs, FLPs, LLCs, GRATs, CLATs, CRATs, CRUTs, FLIP CRUTs, QPRTs, etc., etc. But, no matter which techniques are used or in what combination, we always strive to make these transfers as painless as possible. We emphasize our philosophy of having transfers be legally effective but practically invisible. Yes, all of these transfers will have legal meaning and effect, but to the greatest extent legally possible, they can be structured so you will not feel any less wealthy.

Of course, families with larger estates also have greater concern for spoiling or otherwise causing harm to their children by providing them with too much wealth. To deal with these concerns, we can work with you in crafting incentive and disincentive distribution plans and, where desired, enabling your family to become much more involved in charitable giving so that your children will be more grounded by thinking of others and not just themselves and their own lives.