While you’re living and healthy, you value being able to make your own decisions about your finances, property, health care and raising your children. Should you die or become incapacitated, you hope others will handle these matters for you according to your wishes.
The only way to assure that will happen is through estate planning. This process involves weighing various personal and financial decisions and creating legal arrangements to carry out those decisions.
The need for estate planning is not limited to the wealthy. Everyone needs some degree of estate planning – even young, single people with a modest net worth. Laputka, Bayless, Ecker & Cohn combines estate planning, will and trust preparation and estate and trust administration with a wide range of personal services.
For more information about estate planning, contact partner, Martin D. Cohn.
Our work includes:
- Preparing wills, trusts, and related estate planning documents of virtually all types and degrees of sophistication
- All aspects of charitable foundations and charitable giving
- Analysis of assets, liabilities, cash requirements, insurance, and retirement benefits and plans
- Wealth preservation techniques, including irrevocable trust, gift programs, purchase and sale of partial interests, generation-skipping transfers, charitable transfers, and asset freezes
- Alternatives for protecting the aged and disabled, including special needs trusts, government assistance programs, durable powers of attorney, health care directories (sometimes known as living wills), and guardianships and conservatorships
- Representing individuals and corporate fiduciaries in the administration of estates, revocable and irrevocable trusts, and guardianships and conservatorship
- Preparing documents for adoptions and name changes
- Preparing federal estate and state inheritance tax returns
- Representing corporate and individual fiduciaries and will and trust beneficiaries
- International and multi-state estate planning, including planning for foreign nationals and foreign investors
- Business succession planning, including business reorganization and recapitalization, and shareholder agreements
- Valuation discount planning, including family limited partnerships, grantor-retained annuity trusts, and qualified personal residents trusts.