Practice Areas
Elder Law
The elderly, and their families, face significant Family Wealth issues, including planning with respect to the costs of long-term care and Medicaid eligibility. When your loved ones start to have serious health problems, we can help you to get their affairs in order, to get the right people the right authority to do what needs to be done, and to protect and preserve as much of their estate as possible to provide for their own care, and for their family.
Estate Planning
Estate Planning done properly addresses all of the issues concerning the ownership, management, preservation and transfer of your Family Wealth. An Estate Plan includes not only Wills and Trusts, but also a wide variety of other methods of transferring property in the event of death, all of which have to be carefully coordinated. Planning for disability through powers of attorney is also important, and careful attention must be paid to the Special Needs of disabled family members.
Wills and Probate
Drafting a Will is only part of the process. The rest of it is coordinating all of the other means of transferring property in the event of death, and then ensuring that all of this is administered and taken care of properly once you are gone.
Trusts and Estates
Trusts are very useful in a lot of ways, not just for avoiding probate. They can also help in administering your finances during a period of disability, they can simplify the process of post-death estate administration, and certain types of trust can help preserve assets from death taxes, and from the costs of care of the elderly and disabled.
Estate and Gift Tax
Estate and gift taxation has not disappeared entirely. Many families, particularly in the agricultural world, have significant assets that may be lost to estate and gift taxes, if care is not taken with their estate planning. We can help you minimize the tax burden, to save as much of your estate as possible for your family.