Overview
O ur Trusts and Estates Department advises clients, who are generally domestic or foreign individuals and families with substantial wealth, in a wide variety of personal planning matters.
We provide sophisticated estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer tax planning for domestic and foreign individuals and families. In addition to preparing wills, we use a wide range of vehicles to accomplish our clients’ personal and financial goals. These include:
Administration of Estates and Trusts
We provide a full range of services involved in the administration of complex and substantial estates and trusts and generally act as counsel to the executors or trustees. We also handle various specialized legal issues, such as sales of art, real estate and other assets and the enforcement of legal rights by or against the estate or trust.
Charitable Giving
We assist our clients in formulating and executing plans for charitable giving. We advise them on the formation and governance of private foundations and on how they can involve the younger generations of the family in philanthropic decisions. We have assisted clients in making major charitable gifts to public charities – such as the creation of endowed professorships – and have worked to structure such gifts so that the donor’s purpose is safeguarded.
- Revocable trusts
- Intentionally defective grantor trusts
- Grantor retained annuity trusts and unitrusts
- Charitable lead trusts
- Charitable remainder trusts
- Qualified personal residence trusts
We offer our clients competent legal advice and assistance and therefore specialize in a range of areas which you will see below.
- Mark S. Linden, Partner