The attorneys of Luce Forward’s family wealth and exempt organizations practice counsel families and individuals in their personal, financial and business dealings, design simple and complex estate plans, solve sophisticated tax problems, and identify and settle issues in estate and trust administration. Our work addresses four general areas of client concerns: estate and tax planning, the responsibilities of fiduciaries in the probate and trust process, dispute resolution in the estate and trust context, and the start-up and operation of nonprofit organizations.
Our team confidentially works with high net worth individuals, including clients from the entertainment and sports industries, and others with equally well-known backgrounds. We have the capacity and knowledge base to handle any complex estate plan and sophisticated tax challenge you bring to us.
We have also earned the respect and confidence of trusts and estates attorneys across the country. Seven members of our team have met the stringent set of criteria required by their peers to be elected to the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel. Fellows are selected on the basis of professional reputation and ability in the fields of trusts and estates, and on the basis of having made substantial contributions to these fields through lecturing, writing, teaching, and bar activities. It is one of the highest honors a trusts and estates attorney can receive.
We have planned estates for individuals of many different backgrounds and situations: retired couples with extensive assets, entrepreneurs with highly profitable businesses, successful executives with large concentrations of company stock, philanthropists, and individuals with significant wealth and tax issues. Our estate and tax services include:
- establishment of trusts, both lifetime and testamentary, from the most basic to the most complex
- design and establishment of charitable split interest trusts, private foundations and similar entities
- set-up and maintenance of family limited partnerships and limited liability companies
- income, estate, gift and generation-skipping tax planning
- business succession planning
- advice and assistance relative to management of assets
- implementation of gift programs
- charitable trust planning
- insurance trust planning
- preparation of wills
- preparation of powers of attorney for financial and health care matters
For individuals and institutions faced with the demanding and complicated responsibilities of acting as trustees of a will or trust, our trusts and estates attorneys are guides and advisors to the probate and trust administrative processes. Clients include trustees, administrators and executors, conservators, guardians, and contestants in will contests. Our services include:
- supporting and advising fiduciaries
- representing fiduciaries in tax matters
Our experienced litigation team advises and represents parties in will contests and other disputes involving inheritance and other rights of beneficiaries and the related responsibilities of fiduciaries, as well as in disputes with state and federal taxing authorities.
Our attorneys have many years of successful experience in designing, implementing, and representing public and private charitable entities in their startup and operation, to include advice as to the form of entity, implementing decisions as to goals of organizations, advising boards of directors or trustees, dealing with tax exemption issues and qualification, and operational aspects of the ongoing enterprise over time. Our services include:
- design and implementation of charitable corporations or trusts
- obtaining and maintaining tax exempt status
- advising charitable organizations in their ongoing operations, as to tax and non tax issues