Trusts & Estate Planning
The trust and estate planning practice at Fidelity Law concentrates on using innovative planning techniques to fulfill their clients’ dispositive goals and to reduce and eliminate taxes. They assist their clients in planning trusts and estates, conveying the family owned corporations and other business interests to children, making charitable donations, and administering their trusts and estates.
Fidelity Law and its co-counsel prepare wills, revocable living trusts, irrevocable trusts, stockholders’ agreements, powers of attorney, and other estate planning documents for their clients. Additionally, they employ tax planning techniques to minimize and eliminate taxes through the use of specialized trusts, GRATs, installment notes, sales, QPRTs, charitable gifts, private foundations, FLPs, and LLCs. They provide creative solutions to allow individuals and families to build and transfer their wealth to younger generations at minimal or no tax cost.
Some examples of their estate planning practice are:
- Drafting Wills and revocable living trusts for clients, which may include a QTIP Trust and a By-Pass Trust.
- Structuring family owned businesses to be income tax efficient and to be able to transfer such business to younger generations at reduced or no estate taxes.
- Preparing Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (known as a “GRAT”).
- Preparing Qualified Personal Residence trusts (known as a “QPRT”) and utilizing other planning techniques to transfer residences.
- Preparing and assisting families with the establishment of family limited partnerships (known as a “FLP”), family limited liability companies, trusts and other wealth preservation strategies.
- Establishing generation-skipping trusts and family dynasty trusts to transfer a family’s assets to multiple generation levels.
- Using defective income trusts (known as irrevocable grantor trusts), and Crummey power trusts.
- Assisting clients in establishing and operating private foundations and nonprofit corporations, and structuring charitable gifts.
- Preparing life insurance trusts (known as an “ILIT”) and employing innovative uses of life insurance to achieve their clients’ estate planning goals.
- Advising closely held family companies, including tax strategies for their sale and split-up. They assist clients with succession planning of the family’s business to multi-generational levels through the use of trusts, gifting, sales and shareholders’ agreements.
- Structuring the ownership of the family owned business to reduce and eliminate estate taxes, and to pay any business related estate taxes in installments under Section 6166.
- Designing estate plans for clients who have large amounts of their wealth in stock options and a single company stock.
- Using installment notes and self-canceling installment notes (known as a “SCIN”) to sell assets to family members.