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Practice/Industry Group Overview
The Trusts and Estates Practice Group provides estate planning, estate administration, and related services to individuals, charitable organizations, foundations, and corporate fiduciaries such as banks and trust companies.
Estate planning services include the preparation of wills, trusts, and associated documents. After careful consultation with clients, we design estate plans to ensure the appropriate disposition of clients' assets and the orderly and cost-effective administration of clients' estates. We give particular attention to reducing estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes and assist clients with lifetime gifting programs, including planning for the transition of family-owned businesses from older to younger generations and planning for charitable giving and the use of private foundations. Gifting strategies include the use of life insurance trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, generation-skipping trusts, family limited partnerships and limited liability companies, "tax defective" grantor trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, and charitable remainder and charitable lead trusts. Because of escalating health care costs and increased longevity, we also emphasize planning for disability, including using powers of attorney and living wills and planning for eligibility for government health care benefits.
Additionally, our attorneys assist executors and administrators of decedents' estates in carrying out their legal duties. We not only provide our services to individuals, but also we represent corporate fiduciaries in controversies involving trust and estate beneficiaries. Our services include preparing and filing all documents and accountings to commence, administer, and formally close estate proceedings; ascertaining and paying valid estate debts; collecting and transferring estate assets to the appropriate beneficiaries; resolving death tax and fiduciary income tax issues; filing death tax and fiduciary income tax returns; and handling tax examinations and audits, where necessary. We use postmortem tax planning to minimize taxes and to address liquidity issues. We also represent clients in will caveats and similar disputes involving the administration of trusts and estates, including representing corporate fiduciaries concerning claims made by beneficiaries of trusts and estates.
An attorney in this practice group has been included in the publication The Best Lawyers in America since 2001; one attorney has been selected as "Legal Elite" by Business North Carolina since 2002; and two attorneys have been recognized as "Super Lawyers" by North Carolina Super Lawyers, once since 2006 and one in 2007. One attorney is a Fellow in the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, the premier organization of estate planning and probate lawyers in the country. Three attorneys are certified by the North Carolina State Bar as Board Certified Specialists in Estate Planning and Probate Law.
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