Trusts & Estates

Our Trusts & Estates Practice provides sound legal advice and insight to help protect your assets during your lifetime and for your family’s future. Whether for high-net-worth individuals, businesses, nonprofits, or corporate trust departments—and in local, multistate, and multinational transactions—the Trusts & Estates Practice delivers sophisticated strategies. We advise clients on all aspects of planning, administration, settlement, and taxation of estates and trusts, collaborating with other practice areas to provide comprehensive solutions.

We create and implement effective estate plans that take into account the effects of U.S. tax laws on U.S. families and on non-U.S. families that own U.S. assets. We collaborate with clients’ trusts and estates lawyers in their countries of residence to ensure estate plans that coordinate the laws of multiple jurisdictions. We have significant experience advising on related income tax issues that can arise for international families, including ownership of interests in foreign trusts, corporations, or other entities.

Private Wealth

We counsel high-net-worth individuals on tax efficient methods to transfer wealth to the next generation, transfer control of family businesses, protect assets, and implement charitable giving.

Trust & Estate Administration

We represent executors through all stages of the probate process, including estate tax return preparation, and when necessary, estate litigation.  We counsel fiduciaries on taking concrete steps to satisfy their fiduciary duties and work with both individual and corporate fiduciaries to prepare and settle accountings.  In coordination with our State & Local Tax Practice, we provide advice to trustees with respect to navigating the multi-state income taxation of trusts.

Cross-Border Planning 

We have decades of expertise in providing specialized cross-border estate planning advice to families with interests on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border, such as U.S. persons living in Canada, U.S. families with Canadian cottages, Canadians who have children living in the U.S., and Canadians seeking to purchase vacation properties in the U.S.

Our Experience

• Estate, gift, and generation-skipping-transfer tax planning
• Cross-border trust & estate planning
• Probate litigation
• Contested trust proceedings
• Multigenerational transfer of assets
• Business succession planning
• Life Insurance planning
• Distributions from qualified plans and IRAs
• Estate and gift tax audits and litigation
• Family limited partnerships
• Asset protection
• Charitable giving
• Private foundations and public charities
• Trust modification

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