Estate Planning & Administration

Our Estate Planning and Administration Team routinely advises clients on all aspects of estate planning, long-term care, guardianship, special needs, Medicaid planning as well as the administration, settlement, and taxation of estates and trusts to protect our clients’ assets and minimize taxable transactions.

Our team will meet with you in person, or remotely at your discretion, to discuss your current affairs and your planning goals and address any immediate questions or concerns.  We will review your options and our recommended strategies to implement your estate planning goals with a keen eye on tax reduction and obtaining your personal planning needs. 

We will then prepare your comprehensive estate plan, which may include wills and other wealth transfer documents, trusts, health care directives and powers of attorney depending on your varying circumstances and assets.  We will go over those documents with you at your home or our office and answer any questions or concerns you may have about them and how they work, and we will help you to properly execute those documents so that they are compliant with New York law.

Many clients are surprised to learn they may benefit from plans that include a generation-skipping trusts, Medicaid Asset Protection Trusts, or special needs trusts to provide for long-term care needs.  And some more sophisticated clients have benefitted from irrevocable life insurance trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, and grantor retained annuity trusts, among others. 

Our team also assists with estate and trust administration.  We advise our clients on their fiduciary obligations, court proceedings, proper accounting, audits and tax returns among other counsel. We also help to gather estate or trust assets, ensure debts are paid and the distribution of assets follows the terms of the estate plan and New York law.    Finally, we also help our clients develop business succession plans working together with our Corporate and Transactional Team to ensure the hard work of one or many generations does not go to waste and that the business is set to thrive upon the retirement of an owner.