You work hard to grow your personal, business and financial worth; we work hard to help you protect these assets for your children and descendants and for the charities you may wish to honor. Often in partnership with your investment and financial advisers, we help you plan for the future and protect your home, your life insurance, your stocks, your IRA and other retirement benefits, and all the other valuable things you have accumulated during your lifetime.
Among the legal tools we utilize to customize a plan for the client are wills, trusts, powers of attorney, business succession plans such as funded buy-sell agreements and family limited partnerships, life insurance funded trusts, and charitable contributions. A wisely drafted plan also considers such concerns as estate tax reduction techniques and gift tax planning, the orderly transfer of a family business or farm, and advance directives regarding a client’s wishes for medical care, potential disability, and funeral arrangements.
Our estate planning attorneys focus on the individual needs of our clients, emphasizing personalized planning. We have experience in business succession planning, gift and generation-skipping transfer tax planning and minimization, and the utilization of the marital deduction and the unified credit to eliminate or reduce federal estate taxes. BFW’s attorneys also have significant experience in representing family members, including an estate’s personal representative or executor, in probate and estate administration matters. We also represent trustees on trust administration. We handle probate litigation and disputes involving estates and trusts of all sizes, since litigation can arise out of a will contest or allegations of breach of fiduciary duty or financial mismanagement.
Marital agreements and prenuptial agreements have more recently become additional components of a complete estate plan. We can assist in drafting and implementing these tools.
