Estate Planning and Wealth Transfer

Leffingwell and Associates, P.C. provides counsel to a wide range of clients, including high net worth individuals and families, regarding sophisticated estate and wealth transfer planning. Our estate planning and wealth transfer solutions are focused on enabling clients to accomplish individual and business goals using strategies that reduce tax costs and inefficiencies. We have significant experience in connection with succession and transfer planning for closely-held business owners and real estate investors. We also have experience in estate and asset protection planning for physicians and medical practices. We take pride in our ability to work as a team with a client’s investment, insurance, accounting, and other professional advisors in order to identify and accomplish the best overall estate and wealth transfer plan available for a particular client.

We provide counsel to single and married individuals regarding a wide range of tax and estate planning matters, including:

• Simple and complex or “tax planned” wills
• Revocable or “living” trusts and “pour-over” wills
• Ancillary instruments including statutory powers of attorney, medical powers of attorney, HIPAA authorizations, declarations of guardian, and directives to physicians or “living” wills
• Irrevocable trusts, including life insurance trusts, grantor trusts, dynasty trusts, and trusts funded with closely held business interests
• Grantor retained annuity trusts (“GRATs”)
• Qualified personal residence trusts (“QPRTs”)
• Special needs trusts
• Premarital, prenuptial, or post-marital agreements
• Qualified and deferred compensation plans, IRA distributions, and beneficiary designation planning
• Asset and creditor protection
• Tax planning to minimize estate, gift, and generation-skipping taxes
• Charitable planning to maximize the benefit and impact of charitable donations
• Acquisitions and management of vacation residences, airplanes, and investment properties, including fractional options
• Life insurance planning, including irrevocable life insurance trusts (“ILITs”)
• Assistance with property and asset valuation for estate taxes and charitable contributions

We provide counsel to clients with charitable planning matters, including:

• Charitable remainder trusts and charitable lead trusts
• Choice and creation of appropriate charitable entity (e.g., private foundation, public charity, donor advised fund, or charitable trust)
• Applications for tax-exempt status
• Administration of private foundations, public charities, and charitable trusts

We provide succession planning counsel to closely-held business and real estate owners including representation regarding:

• Choice and formation of business entities including “C” and “S” corporations, general and limited partnerships, and limited liability companies (“LLCs”)
• General business succession planning
• Buy-sell agreements, including insurance-funded agreements
• Employee stock ownership plans (“ESOPs)
• Management transfers, including management buy-outs and buy-ins
• Stock option plans, “phantom stock” plans, and stock appreciation rights (“SARs”)
• Charitable remainder trusts and charitable lead trusts
• Mergers, sales, and acquisitions
• Recapitalizations and reorganizations
• Corporate and partnership income tax and planning
• Tax deferred or “1031” exchanges
• Complex trust and intergenerational agreements
• Life insurance planning, including family split-dollar plans
• Deduction planning
• Gifting programs and strategies, including grantor retained annuity trusts (“GRATs”) and installment sales to intentionally defective grantor trusts (“IDGTs”)
• Generation-skipping planning

AV® Preeminent™ and BV® Distinguished™ are certification marks of Reed Elsevier Properties Inc., used in accordance with the Martindale-Hubbell certification procedures, standards and policies.