Estate Planning and Wealth Transfer
Lawyers in the Trusts, Estates and Not-for-Profits practice work to understand clients’ family dynamics, values and financial circumstances, and then help clients articulate their wealth transfer and estate planning goals. We view estate planning as a life-long process that involves educating younger generations of family members about the family’s values and gradually developing in them the skills to manage their personal finances and investments and, where appropriate, eventually to assume responsibility for participating in the administration of family trusts and other entities, whether as trustee, advisor or beneficiary. We help our clients define their objectives by thinking through issues such as:
- how wealth should be allocated among generations;
- the advantages and disadvantages of trusts versus outright ownership;
- whether a trust should be designed to encourage or discourage certain behaviors, to supplement earned income, to support a particular lifestyle, or to provide a safety net; and
- the trust distribution policies best suited to their objectives.
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