Reduce Tax Liabilities for Families

• Represented a surviving spouse to successfully pursue a petition to modify her irrevocable trust to remove the bypass trust, to get a step up in tax basis at her passing, and ultimately saved her daughter at least $300,000 in mitigated capital gains taxes.
• Successfully restated trusts to remove bypass trusts to avoid trapping capital gains taxes.
• Use a variety of techniques to save several high net worth families millions of dollars in estate tax liabilities.

Finalize Messy or Complicated Probates and Trust Administrations

• Represented a trustee to effectively administer a trust five years after her mother died and her brother spent those five years failing to properly administer the trust. Investigated all assets and found a successful and creative way to resolve all issues and bring finality to the family.
• Represented an administrator to successfully end a messy probate after the first administrator had passed away during the administration and where the decedent failed to finalize a sixteen year old ancillary probate of his mother’s estate in another state.
• Represented a trustee to successfully complete a trust administration, despite barriers and significant emotional strife presented by the trustee’s siblings.
• Represented a husband and wife to create an estate plan right before the husband died of a terminal illness, saving at least $200,000 in taxes for the wife, sparing the widow from a two-year probate process, and assuring the surviving spouse did not have a financial mess after the husband passed away.
• Represented a financial advisor accused of fraud to settle a probate lawsuit against him, including reimbursement of attorney’s fees and expungement of his FINRA record.
• Represented trustees accused of breach of trust to successfully end the lawsuit with total a complete release of all liability and no out of pocket costs or attorney’s fees.

Protect Incapacitated Persons

• Represented a trustee/son to lock down a trust to prevent further amendments after father clearly lacked mental capacity and his ex-wife remarried him, to prevent financial fraud.
• Represented a woman who successfully pursued a voluntary conservatorship of her estate, by maintaining her mental capacity but also recognizing she had diminished capacity and needed assistance from a professional fiduciary.

Reduce Time and Expense of Probate

• Represented several widows and widowers avoid probate with spousal property petitions to avoid a lengthy probate process and help bring closure to financial matters after the death of their spouse.
• Represented several trustees to successfully retitle homes in the name of the trust with Heggstad petitions, also known as 850 petitions to save time, money, and stress by avoiding probate.
• Created numerous estate plans with open communication to help reduce family strife, especially sibling conflict.