Estate Planning

We advise clients on all aspects of estate planning, including trust planning, estate tax planning, wealth preservation, asset protection and gift planning. We assist individuals and couples by designing estate plans that meet their family’s particular planning needs. Those estate plans often include, living trusts (revocable trusts), Wills, durable powers of attorney, health care proxies and living wills. For some clients, irrevocable life insurance trusts and qualified personal residence trusts are recommended. We also prepare special needs trust plans for disabled persons.

Estate and Gift Tax Planning

The federal government and the state of Massachusetts levy an estate tax on the assets of a deceased individual. For families with large estates, we design and implement plans to minimize the impact of estate taxes on their assets through the use of sophisticated gift planning strategies, including irrevocable life insurance trusts, qualified personal residence trusts and gifting trusts. We can also incorporate multigenerational lifetime trust planning for the shares established for children in order to protect their inheritance from a spouse in a divorce or other creditors and to minimize the impact of estate taxes that are typically imposed at every generation of the family.

Business Succession Planning

Small business owners and rental real estate owners are presented with the unique challenges of business succession and the impact of estate taxes on their business and property. We assist clients with business succession and minimizing estate taxes through the use of valuation discount strategies and the gift and sale of such business interests to grantor trusts and spousal lifetime access trusts.

Estate and Trust Administration

We counsel and guide families of deceased persons with all aspects of estate and trust administration including, preparation probate petitions and related court documents, asset collection and valuation, preparation of estate tax returns, probate inventories, estate and trust accountings and the timing of distributions to beneficiaries.