Trusts & Estates

Fulfilling Your Estate Planning Objectives.

OVERVIEW

At HDRB&B, we help you transfer wealth to the next generation in a tax-efficient manner. Our Trusts & Estates Department provides each client with strategic, innovative and personalized counseling focused on protecting assets for loved ones, often through the use of trusts, while minimizing estate and gift taxes.

Services

  • Estate Planning
  • Preparing Wills
  • Creating Trusts: Gift, Insurance and Dynasty Trusts, GRATs, QPRTs, SLATs and Supplemental Needs Trusts
  • Drafting Health Care Directives and Financial Powers of Attorney
  • Federal and State Estate & Gift Tax Planning
  • Facilitating the Resolution of Disputes between Fiduciaries and Beneficiaries
  • Estate Administration
  • Probate
  • Interfacing with Financial Institutions
  • Coordinating Payment of Taxes
  • Advising Executors and Trustees
  • Advocating for Beneficiaries
  • Elder Law and Special Needs Planning

Representative Matters

  • Assisted a couple with young children in drafting Wills, Health Care Documents and powers of Attorney that named guardians to raise the children, trustees to manage the assets for the children and protected the assets from children’s future creditors and predators.
  • Facilitated a part gift/part sale transaction of a family owned business to a trust for one of the clients’ three children, while creating an estate plan that equalized the other children’s shares to take into account the gift/sale transaction.
  • Strategized with clients and insurance agent to construct a Dynasty Trust to ensure that the family’s wealth would remain protected for future generations, from the heirs themselves, from spouses of the heirs, as well as other creditors and predators; while making sure that the insurance proceeds could be used to pay any future estate taxes that are owed.
  • Represented beneficiaries of a trust in dealing with a corporate fiduciary to increase monthly distributions to the beneficiaries and to get the trust’s assets invested more in line with the beneficiaries wishes.
  • Worked with co-executors of an Estate to market and sell pieces of commercial property in order to maximize wealth for beneficiaries of the Estate. Coordinated with appraisers to determine fair market value of assets in the Estate and formed the trusts necessary to hold real estate interests and other Estate assets going forward.  Filed estate tax returns and obtained release and refunding bonds from the beneficiaries.

Trusts & Estates Blog

  • 11.19.20 Now is the Time to Consider a Gift
    Under current federal estate and gift tax law, a married couple can gift up to $23.16 million ($11.58 per person), and that gift, as well as all future appreciation on the gift, will pass generation to generation completely free from transfer taxes (i.e. no gift taxes, estate taxes, or generation-skipping taxes). This amount is likely to be lowered by the federal government in the future. Acting now, however, will ensure that the exemption is used. Read more>>

Trusts & Estates Department

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