Wealth Management
Estate Planning
Primary Contact: Adam Crow
Our attorneys serve clients who seek to transfer assets efficiently to their intended beneficiaries. We counsel with our clients to understand their goals for the distribution of assets during life and at death. Our tax, trusts and estates attorneys routinely advise clients on a broad range of tax and non-tax issues and develop, implement, and defend innovative and comprehensive planning strategies to address clients’ wealth transfer and other planning objectives in a tax efficient manner. Among them, family-owned and closely held business planning, asset protection techniques, special needs planning, and general family issues. Rose Law Firm clients include owners of closely held businesses, corporate executives, investors, and a variety of other individuals with estate and tax planning needs.
We also handle all aspects of estate and trust administration, including the representation of both fiduciaries and beneficiaries in contested probate and trust matters. Our goal is to make the estate and trust administration process as simple and transparent as possible in an effort to avoid family disputes. When a dispute becomes unavoidable, however, we are experienced in representing both beneficiaries and fiduciaries in all types of litigation.
We counsel our clients in the following areas:
Preparation of simple and complex wills and revocable trusts
Preparation of financial and healthcare powers of attorney, living wills and health care directives
Designation of beneficiaries for retirement plans and life insurance policies
Estate tax, gift tax, and generation-skipping tax planning, and implementation of related planning techniques, to transfer wealth to future generations, including grantor retained annuity trusts, sales to intentionally defective grantor trusts and qualified personal residence trusts
Succession planning for family-owned and closely held businesses
Preparation of federal gift tax returns
Preparation of dynasty trusts
Formation of family limited partnerships and limited liability companies
Protection and preservation of assets and utilization of entity structures and methods to limit liability
Distribution planning from retirement plans and IRAs to defer income tax liability
Charitable planning, including the creation of charitable lead and annuity trusts
Life insurance planning, including the creation of irrevocable life insurance trusts
Negotiation and preparation of premarital agreements
Special needs planning
Estate and Trust Administration
Our team of lawyers works with executors and trustees in matters of probate and estate and trust administration to ensure that our client’s desires are implemented. We counsel individual and corporate fiduciaries and beneficiaries on the estate administration and settlement process, assisting clients maneuver through the legal requirements imposed by the governing documents and state law as well as the tax compliance obligations for fiduciary income taxes, estate and gift taxes, and generation-skipping transfer taxes. We routinely resolve sensitive disputes in the areas of validity, construction, and administration of wills and trusts.
Among the various areas of estate and trust administration services are:
Preparation of required court documents
Advice regarding all matters related to funding, administration, taxation, distribution, and responsibilities involving estates and trusts
Assisting trustees and beneficiaries with judicial and non-judicial modifications to irrevocable trusts
Representing creditors in connection with claims against estates and trusts
Consulting with accountants regarding the decedent’s final income tax returns and income tax returns for estates and trusts
Preparation of federal estate tax returns and related tax planning
Planning post-death matters, including the use of qualified disclaimers
Representation in disputes with beneficiaries
Fiduciary litigation
