Overview

At Lane & Waterman, our attorneys provide comprehensive estate planning services that meet your unique needs. We work with clients to develop and implement individualized estate plans that protect important and valuable assets and create security for family members in the event of death or incapacity. We strive to avoid unnecessary delays and ensure probate and tax costs are held to a minimum.

A thorough Estate Plan also helps reduce and potentially avoid any estate and gift taxes that might otherwise apply and generally protect and preserve your assets for your family and the next generations to come. With effective planning, we make sure your wishes and objectives are met in the most tax and cost efficient manner while minimizing the amount of your assets paid to the courts, the IRS, and other claimants.

Our estate planning services often overlap with other practice areas, such as business and corporate succession planning and general tax planning. Business succession planning requires a breadth of knowledge beyond just estate planning, and our attorneys offer a blend of experience to meet those specialized needs.

Estate Planning dovetails nicely with business succession planning, and our attorneys are experienced to meet your wealth and succession planning needs.

Our estate planning services include the planning, drafting, or maintenance of any documents necessary to fulfill your wishes through:

• Wills and Revocable Living Trusts
• Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts
• Special and Supplemental Needs Planning
• Medicaid Planning
• Tax Planning, including estate, gift and generation skipping transfer tax planning
• Lifetime and post-death charitable giving (including charitable gift annuities, charitable unitrusts and annuity trusts, and outright bequests)
• Establishing 501(c)(3) tax exempt charities and private foundations
• Real Estate Transfers and small business or family farm ownership planning, and related valuation matters
• Wealth Transfer Plans for high net worth individuals
• Durable Powers of Attorney for Financial Affairs
• Living Wills, Patient Advocate Designations and Durable Powers of Attorney for Health Care
• Asset Protection Strategies and advanced estate planning strategies, including family limited partnerships (FLP), family limited liability companies (FLLC), qualified personal residence trusts (QPRTs), grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), self-canceling installment notes (SCINs), private annuities, and planning for non-citizens
• Retirement Plan designations and Planning