Domestic Estate Planning & Charitable Planning

The design and implementation of estate and wealth-transfer plans is an essential component of the firm’s practice. In addition to preparing comprehensive wills and management trusts tailored toward realizing each client’s unique goals  and minimizing exposure to income and transfer taxes, the attorneys at GFGR employ a range of tools, from irrevocable trusts to marital property agreements to carefully-drafted beneficiary designations,  in order to maximize the value of assets that can be transferred to successive generations. An integrated estate plan also involves business succession, and in some cases, private placement life insurance and international estate planning. GFGR provides expertise in all of these areas.

Because the average life span is longer, more of us can expect to spend some part of our lives unable to manage our own affairs.  Court-supervised guardianships of an incapacitated individual’s person and affairs can be especially burdensome.  Therefore, no estate plan is complete without disability planning. The attorneys at GFGR integrate financial and medical powers of attorney with other estate documents to facilitate the most efficient and least costly management of a client’s assets and affairs in the event of a disability.

Charitable planning also plays an integral role in a client’s overall estate plan. GFGR attorneys employ a number of tools to help clients to both address their philanthropic concerns and maximize the benefits of all of the available tax incentives, such as charitable lead or remainder trusts, testamentary charitable trusts, private operating and grant-making foundations, supporting organizations, and donor advised funds. The process of deferred charitable giving not only involves helping clients determine which tool will best meet their objectives, but also preparing the documents and forms necessary to create a new trust or non-profit corporation, and if applicable, file the required forms with the Internal Revenue Service and governing state agencies to establish and maintain the entity’s legal and tax-exempt status The firm also assists clients with identifying and selecting permissible public charities to which charitable grants may be made, as well as the documentation required to properly effectuate such grants. GFGR attorneys have also had extensive experience in assisting clients with their charitable giving outside of the United States.