Practice Areas & Industries: Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP has a broad and sophisticated individual tax and estate planning practice. The practice involves lifetime tax and business planning for individuals, post-mortem income tax planning and estate and trust administration. Although the focus of the practice is on estate planning, it is our belief that estate planning includes more than properly drafted wills and trust agreements. Therefore, we offer extensive experience in income tax and business planning for owners of closely held businesses, transfer tax minimization, real estate transactions, and international taxation and estate planning. In addition, we work with clients to develop and implement lifetime gift programs, insurance programs and charitable giving programs appropriate to the client's desires, needs and resources.

Services Available

Estate Planning

Our clients cover the entire spectrum, from individuals with assets of several hundreds of thousands of dollars to persons with estates valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Working directly with the client, and, where appropriate, the client's advisors and accountants, it is our goal to provide sound tax and business planning advice and to create an estate plan that achieves the client's goals in a manner that minimizes the time and expense of estate administration.

Business Planning

Our firm provides advice for special issues often faced by individuals. We have substantial experience in the area of business planning for owners of closely held businesses, including extensive experience in S corporations and partnership issues. We assist clients in the integration of business planning techniques and estate planning by providing advice on the tax and non-tax issues attendant to the transfer of family businesses, including capital structure reorganizations, buy-sell arrangements, gift programs, and valuation issues.

International Planning

We have advised numerous clients on issues related to international income and estate tax planning. We write and speak extensively on the federal estate and gift taxes that affect individuals who are not citizens of the United States. We regularly provide advice to nonresident aliens with extensive United States business interests and create trusts to protect those assets from United States income and transfer taxes.

Estate Administration

Post-mortem tax planning and estate administration are a major part of our practice. We advise estates of all sizes and in all jurisdictions, and counsel personal representatives in the preparation of federal and state estate tax returns and income tax returns, and in tax elections and allocations peculiar to estates and trusts. In addition, the firm advises fiduciaries on business issues affecting estates and trusts, including the restructuring of business interests, providing advice on the disposition of assets and representing estates or trusts as shareholders of business enterprises.

Controversies

The firm has represented numerous individuals and estates in disputes before the Internal Revenue Service concerning income, gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer tax matters. In the course of these representations we have had significant experience in the area of asset valuation and in the issue of whether property held in trusts or similar arrangements is subject to gift or estate tax. Further, the firm has represented individuals and estates in fiduciary and tax litigation.

The firm has also represented fiduciaries and beneficiaries in non-tax disputes regarding the validity and interpretation of wills and trusts.

Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP has a broad array of knowledge in all facets of individual income taxation, business planning and estate planning and administration. It is our goal in tax and estate planning to satisfy not only our clients' concerns about the disposition of their assets and the well-being of their families, but also, through effective transfer tax planning, to minimize the total transfer taxes and administration costs and, therefore, maximize the assets which will be available for our clients' beneficiaries.