The attorneys of the Phillips Nizer LLP Trusts and Estates Department bring to their tasks invaluable experience and close "hands on" attention in the planning and administration of estates and trusts. The senior members of the department are widely known authors and lecturers on estate planning subjects, with emphasis on gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer taxation and the income taxation of trusts and estates. In addition to domestic estate planning, the Department offers extensive skill and experience in international estate planning and transnational estate planning and wealth organization for U.S. persons with substantial assets abroad, non-U.S. persons with substantial assets in the United States, and non-U.S. persons of substantial means who plan to become U.S. tax residents or domiciliaries.
In planning for reduction of the impact of taxation on the transfer of wealth from generation to generation and the preservation of family owned businesses, the Department, often working together with members of the firm's tax, pension, real estate and corporate departments, employs all available tax planning tools, including family limited partnership formation, life insurance trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts and unitrusts, qualified personal residence trusts, private annuities, intentionally "defective" grantor trusts, self-canceling installment obligations, private foundations and charitable lead and remainder trusts. Planning for the tax efficient disposition of qualified retirement benefits is frequently involved in the Department's services.
Recognizing that tax reduction is often of secondary concern, members of the Department are sensitive to the needs of clients dealing with problems arising from remarriages, the conflicting or merely different interests of beneficiaries, and needs to provide for the young, the elderly and the disabled.
The firm represents individual and corporate executors and trustees in connection with the administration of trusts and estates, assisting sometimes inexperienced fiduciaries in the performance of their duties. Services to executors include post-mortem income tax planning, representation in state and federal estate tax proceedings and matters involving the disposition of assets of every description. The Department takes pride in its ability to accomplish efficient and economical administration of estates and to offer wise counsel to trustees of testamentary and lifetime trusts.
The Department also regularly offers expert advice regarding deferred charitable giving and represents directors and officers of charitable corporations and foundations and trustees of charitable trusts.
