Practice Areas

Trust and Estate Planning

An estate plan will dispose of your assets upon your death and manage your assets if you become incapacitated. I help clients create an estate plan to provide for the people they care about while reducing complexity, taxes, and cost. While I tailor each plan to your individual needs, most plans fall into three categories:

• PLANNING WITHOUT A REVOCABLE LIVING TRUST - A revocable living trust plan (discussed below) will be necessary to accomplish most clients’ objectives - especially in California - but not everyone’s. Depending on what assets you own and who you want to manage and receive your assets, there may be simpler and less expensive options. Discussing these options (including what would happen if you do no planning) is important for every client to understand and whenever prudent, I am happy to help clients implement simpler alternatives to a revocable trust plan.

• PLANNING WITH A REVOCABLE LIVING TRUST - A revocable trust plan uses a revocable living trust as the primary document to manage your assets if you are incapacitated and at your death. A revocable living trust empowers the people you name in the trust document to manage your assets for you or your family without the delay and expense of court intervention. Revocable living trust plans can greatly streamline the administration of your estate at your death and provide sophisticated distribution schemes for your beneficiaries, but the planning process is more involved than planning without a revocable living trust. We will discuss the whole process, and I will provide you an estimate of fees and costs upfront.

• PLANNING BEYOND A REVOCABLE LIVING TRUST - In addition to a plan for the disposition of assets at death, some clients also want a lifetime strategy to transfer assets to the people and causes they care about. A lifetime transfer plan will allow you to: 1) support your favorite people and causes; 2) involve your children or grandchildren directly in the enjoyment, management, and stewardship of important family assets, including a business; 3) defer or reduce transfer tax liability; build on your family culture and values. A lifetime transfer plan may be as simple as writing checks directly to individuals or charities, or as complex as transferring assets to trusts with varying features and tax attributes. Complex lifetime transfer vehicles (like “ILITs”, “GRATs”, “IDGTs”, “CRTs”, and “CLTs”) can be very effective, but are also costly and time consuming to create and administer. Before completing any complex planning, we will discuss the range of options and whether complex lifetime transfer vehicles are necessary to achieve your objectives, or if a simpler alternative is available.