Personal Tax Planning
The goal of any estate plan is to protect and preserve wealth in the way that best meets the needs of each individual and family. Andrews Kurth personal tax planning lawyers know that achieving this basic objective takes careful analysis and planning. Using the experience and resources we have developed working with many families, we craft personalized estate planning solutions and make sure they are carried out as our clients intend—maximizing financial benefit while minimizing taxes and fulfilling all fiduciary responsibilities.
Planning for the Future
Because every client’s needs are different, we create estate plans tailored for a wide range of circumstances. While these plans provide for the distribution of assets that occurs after death, we also use them to address numerous other issues that affect a client’s financial future:
- Creating a variety of trusts and lifetime gifts to shelter family assets and minimize tax impact, such as revocable living trusts, charitable trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, insurance trusts and generation-skipping trusts
- Addressing business planning for the family, including the creation of entities or restructuring of entities in existence
- Providing for medical needs that involve elder care, incapacity or heirs with disabilities, including the preparation of medical care powers of attorney and directions to physicians
- Integrating the details of employer insurance, benefit and pension plans, and tax-deferred compensation
- Structuring favorable retirement plans and Individual Retirement Account (IRA) distributions
Handling the Crucial Details
Whether an estate plan involves a simple will or a series of complex trusts, our lawyers work with executors and administrators to make sure all the details are handled properly, including:
- Valuation issues and working with appraisers on gift and estate tax matters
- Representation in all Probate Court proceedings
- Preparation and filing of the estate tax return and probate inventory and any other necessary paperwork
Carrying Out Your Wishes
An estate plan is only effective if it is properly administered. Our lawyers work to make sure that each client’s wishes on asset distribution are carried out with minimum cost and maximum efficiency. We give advice to trustees and beneficiaries about:
- Trust interpretation
- Asset distribution
- Tax questions
When estate settlement and administration involves disputes, our trust lawyers work with colleagues in the firm’s tax and litigation practices to settle disagreements among tax authorities, fiduciaries and beneficiaries regarding the validity, construction and administration of wills and estate plans.
Justifying Your Confidence
A good estate plan helps individuals and families with some of their most complex challenges: 1) planning the preservation of hard-earned financial assets, 2) assuring the future care of a loved one and 3) resolving the future direction of a family business.
