Our Estates & Trusts Group offers a wide array of experience and assistance in the areas of estate planning, estate and trust administration, and charitable giving. Our Estates & Trusts Group is one of the largest and most sophisticated of its kind in our area.

We work with our clients to develop estate plans that seek to maximize the preservation of wealth both during life and upon death, and that also seek to minimize the potential for future conflicts among heirs and other future stakeholders. This planning often includes advice on how to protect clients’ assets from erosion by death taxes, long-term care costs, and other future claims. While our planning is focused on individual wealth, much of our planning work is with entrepreneurs and investors, where we work with our Business & Finance Group to meld private wealth planning with business planning.

Our Group also spends a great deal of time assisting our client’s personal representatives (i.e., Executors, Trustees, Guardians, etc.) in the management of wealth transfer, helping them to administer decedents’ estates, trusts, and guardianships of minors or incapacitated persons.

This Group’s services include assistance for clients in the following areas:

• Asset Protection Planning
• Charitable Giving
• Elder Law & Medicaid Planning
• Estate Planning & Family Wealth Preservation
• Estate Planning for Non-Citizens and Expatriates
• Estate & Trust Administration
• Guardianships
• Planning for Individuals with Disabilities and Special Needs Trusts
• Planning for IRAs and Other Retirement Benefits
• Probate, Estate and Fiduciary Litigation

Our Estates and Trust practice area has a broad geographic range, representing clients in the Greater Philadelphia area and Bucks County and Montgomery County, and throughout Central Pennsylvania, Eastern Pennsylvania, Central New Jersey and South Jersey.

Guardianship services include:

• Representation of family members in proceedings seeking guardians of adult incapacitated persons

Core Estate Planning Services include:

• Wills, and if appropriate, Revocable Trusts
• Powers of Attorney and Living Wills
• Beneficiary Designations for Life Insurance and Retirement Plans

 More complex estate planning may involve the strategies using:

• Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts
• Funded Revocable Trusts
• Transfers of business interests and certain investment assets via Family Limited Partnerships (FLPs) and Family Limited Liability Companies (FLLCs)
• Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs), Grantor Retained Unitrusts (GRUTs), and Grantor Retained Income Trusts (GRITs)
• Charitable Remainder Trusts and Charitable Lead Trusts
• Private Foundations
• Qualified Personal Residence Trusts (QPRTs)
• Sales and gifts to Irrevocable Grantor Trusts
• Domestic Asset Protection Trusts
• Limited Liability Companies and similar entities for family asset protection
• Qualified Domestic Trusts (QDOTs) for non-citizen spouses

Estate and trust administration services include:

• Administration/probate of estates and trusts of all sizes
• Representation of individual executors, administrators and trustees, as well as the largest of trust companies
• Post-mortem tax planning
• Maintenance of detailed fiduciary accountings
• Preparation of Federal and state estate and inheritance tax returns
• Assistance with the Decedent’s final income tax return and the estate’s fiduciary income tax returns
• Administration of all types of trusts including credit shelter (or “bypass”) trusts, irrevocable life insurance trusts, intentionally defective grantor trusts, charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), grantor retained unitrusts (GRUTs), and grantor retained income trusts (GRITs).
  
  • Assistance with the trust’s fiduciary income tax returns
  • Consultation in connection with the fiduciary’s duties under the trust instrument