Estate Planning
Where there’s a will, there’s a way: your way.
Lourie & Cutler’s estate planning practice is innovative and comprehensive. Our attorneys customize plans that are appropriate for each client, whether it’s planning for family, future generations, charitable institutions or the other important individuals and organizations in a client’s life. From simple wills and trusts to the most sophisticated wealth transfer vehicles, our estate plans are tailored to meet each individual client’s needs. Given our attorneys’ experiences in a broad range of practice areas, we can integrate estate planning with business and tax planning, as well as asset protection, to provide a holistic approach to a client’s legal issues that require attention. We help our clients pursue a wide range of estate planning strategies and vehicles, including the following:
- Grantor retained interest trusts, commonly known by their acronyms — GRATs, GRUTs, and QPRTs — which allow assets to be transferred to beneficiaries with significant gift tax savings.
- Family limited partnerships and family limited liability companies, which ensure centralized management of gifted assets and may be structured to take advantage of discounts and other valuation opportunities.
- Life insurance trusts, which can increase estate liquidity and avoid taxation of insurance proceeds.
- Charitable organizations, which enable our clients to meet their charitable goals, using vehicles such as private foundations, from which charitable donations may be made, or split-interest trusts (commonly known as charitable remainder trusts and charitable lead trusts), which may provide an income stream or valuable tax benefits.
- Dynasty and generation-skipping trusts, which minimize estate taxes for current and future generations.
In addition to setting up various estate planning vehicles, we offer counsel on how to administer and gain tax advantages from these vehicles. We take pride in the fact that many of our clients are multi-generational –-in many cases, the close relationships we build with our clients continue from one generation to the next.