Estate Planning and Probate

We are trusted advisors. Lawyers in the firm’s Estate Planning and Probate Practice Group have a strong reputation as trusted advisors to the region’s most successful businesses and individuals. Protection of our clients’ wealth for the benefit of future generations is of the utmost importance to us. Our lawyers use their considerable skills and experience to assist clients in achieving and transferring personal wealth, all while reducing applicable taxes.

We have a broad range of clients. Lawyers in the firm’s Estate Planning and Probate Practice Group have a diverse set of clients. Our lawyers routinely represent and advise clients in a range as broad as those having millions of dollars of wealth to those on a fixed monthly income.

We work with others to develop and implement the plan. Lawyers in the firm’s Estate Planning and Probate Practice Group routinely work with other wealth-planning professionals, such as bankers, accountants, financial planners and insurance agents, to develop wealth protection and transfer strategies, and to also successfully administer and settle estates and trusts. Our approach to estate planning and wealth transfers is that a client is typically best served by a team of qualified professionals working together to achieve that client’s goals.

We do a lot for our clients. The practice areas of the lawyers in the firm’s Estate Planning and Probate Practice Group are broad and diverse. We routinely advise clients as to:

  • Implementation of a basic testamentary estate plan, including a Last Will and Testament, and, in some cases, a revocable trust
  • Trust planning and implementation, including irrevocable trusts such as grantor, life insurance, annuity, qualified personal residence, special needs and charitable trusts
  • Advanced directives, such as power of attorney instruments, living will declarations, and healthcare representative appointments
  • Lifetime gift making, including charitable and non-charitable gifting
  • Business succession planning for family-owned and closely-held businesses
  • Federal estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer tax planning techniques, including valuation discount and estate freeze strategies, along with family limited partnerships, intra-family sales, and dynasty trust planning
  • Guardianships
  • Adoptions
  • Pre-marital and post-marital agreements
  • Administration of a decedent’s probate estate or trust
  • Rights, duties and responsibilities as executor of an estate or trustee of a trust
  • Rights of a beneficiary or creditor of a decedent’s estate or a trust
  • Preparation of tax returns for wealth transfers, including gift and estate tax returns
  • Medicaid planning, long-term care expense planning and related elder law concerns
  • Special needs planning for disabled children and their parents
  • Estate and trust litigation, including will contests and trustee breach disputes