ESTATE PLANNING - Our firm offers a comprehensive range of estate planning services, regardless of whether the clients' estate is large or small. The preparation of legal instruments such as wills, testamentary trusts, revocable and irrevocable lifetime trusts, durable powers of attorney, living wills and health care powers of attorney, is only part of the process. For all our clients, we strive to create family security by ensuring that family members are effectively provided for in the most efficient manner possible.

For clients with taxable estates, our estate planning attorneys counsel clients regarding the multitude of wealth management strategies used to restructure asset ownership to minimize federal and state income taxes, gift taxes and estate and generation-skipping tax consequences. Some of the tools we use include:

• family and marital trusts that maximize the available credit shelter amounts;
• family limited partnerships (FLP) and limited liability companies (LLC) that enable the making of discounted gifts;
• charitable remainder trusts to provide income to the donor for life with the benefit of an income tax deduction for the charitable gift and reduced estate taxes;
• irrevocable life insurance trusts to remove sizable assets from the taxable estate; and
• qualified personal residence trusts (QPRT) and grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATS) to enable discounted transfers of assets.