Wills, Estates & Trusts Group
For over 60 years, Capehart Scatchard's Wills, Estates and Trusts Group has worked to protect the interests of those involved in the transfer of assets from one generation to another. Our estates lawyers have developed the practical experience which comes from having outlived many of its clients. Because estate planning involves an understanding of human nature, as well as tax planning and property law, it is useful to have participated in carrying out those estate plans. Just as financial planning must take into account the client's tolerance for risk, tax planning must take into account the client's non-tax objectives. Our experience is helpful in reaching the appropriate balance between tax and other family objectives.
Whether your goals are reducing taxes, increasing assets, or protecting your heir or other interests from the complexities of transferring property, Capehart Scatchard's estate lawyers have a long tradition of providing personal service to individuals and their families involved with the preservation, administration, and distribution of their assets, and have been a trusted and respected source of counsel for many years.
Complex and changing laws, often fraught with highly technical tax rules, have made estate planning and administration a challenging area through which to maneuver, even for the most experienced practitioner. Our estates lawyers have developed the discipline and expertise to listen carefully to the concerns of our clients and to the objectives they need to achieve. We work closely with you to establish well-crafted plans and strategies which will thoughtfully and effectively accomplish your goals - now and in the future.
Capehart Scatchard estates lawyers work hard to stay thoroughly conversant in estate, gift, generation-skipping, and fiduciary income tax matters. Our Group attorneys are seasoned in the many estate tax, inheritance tax, and income tax issues which affect estate planning, including the marital deduction (including QTIP, GPOA and QDT forms), the by-pass trust, irrevocable life insurance trusts, pensions, and GST. Our attorneys are familiar with business entities, including S corporations, FLPs and LLCs, and discounts for minority interests and lack of marketability. We also have managed the many tax issues in estate administration, including business and property appraisals, discounts, credits for prior transfers, disclaimers, elections, section 6166 payment, sections 303 and 302(b)(2) redemptions, basis, IRD, allocations.
In certain tax-related fields (such as pension taxation, profit sharing plans, taxation of charitable remainder trusts, and procedures involved in tax litigation), members of Estates Group work closely with Capehart Scatchard tax attorneys. For those clients who have closely-held business interests, our estates attorneys call upon the experience of our business attorneys who provide extensive resources and technical savvy.
We have decades of experience with family business succession issues, which are frequently aggravated by the clash between business rules (merit) and family rules (children are equal; parents are supreme). When succession was not an objective, we have guided the sale of all manner of business and property interests.
When litigation become necessary, members of our Estates Group work with our Litigation Department to deliver the best possible representation to our clients. We have litigated the interpretation of wills and trusts, the validity of pre-nuptial agreements, spouse's elective share, tax allocations, business value, buy-sell agreements, domicile and jurisdiction, cy pres, reasonable fiduciary compensation, removal of fiduciaries, undue influence, recovery of "gifts," tax planning for mental incompetents, wrongful death, debts and claims.
Above all the valuable services our estates attorneys provide to our clients, the most important is that we help solve or avoid problems. An estate plan which leaves the children fighting, or the widow sleepless, or the business closed, may indicate a poor plan. It is quite difficult to foresee every problem which the future may hold, but the experience of Capehart Scatchard's Wills, Estates and Trusts Group increases the likelihood of success.
Wills, Estates & Trusts Group Attorneys
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