We focus our practice on middle-income families and families with substantial assets.We are skilled in utilizing trusts and other tax-planning mechanisms to permit families to maximize the value of their estates for their heirs and later generations.

We also assist and counsel personal representatives (also known as "executors") with probate and trust administration matters, including filing the will, setting up testamentary trusts, preparing accountings, dealing with creditors, preparing inventories and tax returns, valuing assets, and distributing assets. Post-death issues sometimes also include assisting personal representatives and potential heirs in will contests, valuation or accounting disputes, or in actions against trustees for breach of fiduciary duty. The firm also represents clients in guardianship and conservator matters.

Trusts & Estate planning often requires a careful preparation of a Trust. For example, most families with young children will want a trust created for the care of the children in the event that both parents die. It is also very common for an estate plan to leverage the marital deduction by using a bypass trust. Other families. especially blended families, wish to direct the ultimate beneficiaries of their assets by using a QTIP trust. In addition, families often use trusts to protect the proceeds of a life insurance policy from taxation. (Many people do not realize that life insurance proceeds are included in calculating the value of an estate for estate tax purposes. Families with young children often have large life insurance policies to protect their families, but those policies cause their estate to be taxed.) A life insurance trust can avoid that tax. For more information about life insurance trusts, click here. We are fully equipped to create an appropriate revocable or irrevocable trust for your family.