ESTATE PLANNING

At Heller Espenkotter, we take an integrative and personalized approach to the estate planning process. Planning is not done in isolation, but as part of a process where all facets of our practice are brought together to insure that we have addressed our clients’ needs to provide for their beneficiaries, protect their hard earned assets and properly structure their business and investment holdings. We provide highly customized estate planning services to assist our domestic and international clients in conserving, protecting, managing and transferring their wealth, while minimizing income, gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer taxes. We have extensive experience in structuring complex estate plans using a multitude of techniques, such as revocable and irrevocable trusts, including dynasty trusts, marital trusts, spousal lifetime access trusts (“SLATs”), life insurance trusts (“ILITs”), intentionally defective grantor trusts (“IDGTs”), beneficiary defective trusts (“BDITs”), etc., wills, and durable powers of attorney, designations of health care surrogate, living will declarations, family limited partnerships, corporations and limited liability companies. Planning often includes designing and implementing intra-family sales, intra-family gifts and related transactions. Our attorneys frequently speak at conferences and write on a wide array of estate planning, asset protection and wealth transfer topics.