Estate Planning

Estate Planning is essential to the well being of our client and his or her family matters. We perform a comprehensive review of the family and financial situation, and discuss the desires of our client to identify the estate planning objectives. We design creative methods to achieve those objectives, while minimizing the impact of taxes. The firm's estate plans range from simple wills to complex revocable and irrevocable trusts. Sophisticated gifting and business transfer techniques such as family limited partnerships, limited liability companies, Grantor Retainer Annuity Trusts (GRATs), Qualified Personal Residence Trusts (QPRTs) and business recapitalizations are also employed to attain our client's tax and non-tax objectives.

Detailed consideration is given to tax and probate ramifications, including federal estate taxes, generation-skipping transfer taxes, gift taxes, Michigan estate taxes, and the resulting income tax consequences. Our goal is to help our client achieve his or her testamentary objectives (including business succession, retirement planning and charitable objectives) and to minimize taxes in achieving those objectives.

Our estate planning services include:

• Counseling on income, gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer tax matters
• Preparing personalized estate planning documents such as wills, revocable living trusts, family limited partnerships, limited liability companies, GRATs, QPRTs, generation-skipping trusts, irrevocable insurance trusts, charitable trusts, and powers of attorney for financial matters and for medical treatment decisions
• Representing clients on income, gift, estate and other tax matters before the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Tax Court, the Michigan Department of Treasury, Tax Tribunal and other courts and agencies
• Counseling on retirement plan distribution taxation
• Representing fiduciaries in the administration of estates and trusts
• Establishing private foundations and other charitable giving programs
• Closely held business succession planning, including recapitalizations, buy-sell agreements