Practices: Trusts and Estate Planning

Lawyers in our estate planning practice provide counsel to a variety of clients in the areas of lifetime and testamentary estate planning, trust and estate administration, and succession planning for closely held businesses. Our practice involves complex estate, gift, generation-skipping and income tax matters, asset-management matters and related planning devices, such as family partnerships, split interest charitable trusts, grantor-retained annuity or trusts, irrevocable insurance trusts, and “living” trusts. We also are experienced in planning for executives and others whose estates consist of interests in large qualified plan accounts, or large individual retirement accounts.

We advise a number of closely held corporations, partnerships, and limited liability companies on management succession techniques, including shareholder agreements, restrictive partnership provisions, and restrictive operating agreements. In addition to representing executors and trustees during the administration of an estate and trust, we are involved in trust or estate related litigation and family settlements.

Our estate planning professionals can help clients:

• Estimate and minimize the estate tax liability exposure;
• Reduce taxes by using a general fund or family trust;
• Reduce taxes by making lifetime gifts;
• Create vehicles to avoid probate;
• Resolve problems posed by family businesses and second marriages through a properly designed buy-sell agreement or other methods;
• Improve estate liquidity through:
  
  • Life insurance
  • Buy-sell agreements
  • Diversified investments
    
    • Structuring the estate to qualify to pay estate taxes over ten years; and
    • Structuring the estate to permit closely-held corporations to distribute cash without being taxed as a dividend;
• Provide for management succession;
• Structure your estate to minimize the value of your business for federal estate tax purposes;
• Design a charitable giving program; and
• Plan for large retirement benefits.

Our experience includes:

• Pre-death planning, post-death administration, and, when necessary, trust and estate litigation;
• Planning for management and ownership succession of various closely-held businesses;
• Post-death administration of trusts and estates with closely-held business interests;
• Post-death tax planning for closely-held and family businesses;
• Successful appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court of trust construction for a major Chicago financial institution; and
• Dismissal of plaintiff’s tortious interference with expectancy claim and obtaining summary judgment on behalf of estate in a will contest.