Our estates and trusts practitioners provide highly personalized service to individuals and families, working closely with clients' financial institutions and asset managers. We prepare detailed estate plans for our clients, recommending alternative ways to meet their objectives while minimizing estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer taxes. Our individual clients range from high net worth individuals to families with young children seeking to establish a sound estate planning framework for growing families. Our clients are frequently "multiple nationality" families, where one or more members are non-United States citizens, or foreign citizens who have businesses or property interests in the United States. We often work with counsel in foreign countries to integrate U.S. plans with ones established in the clients’ home country.

Once an estate plan has been approved, we prepare the instruments necessary to implement the plan, including wills, trust agreements, healthcare proxies and durable powers of attorney. We also provide specialized planning for particular circumstances, such as closely held businesses. We frequently plan for lifetime family wealth transfers, including establishment of family limited partnerships or limited liability companies to mitigate estate taxes. The implementation process often addresses philanthropic objectives across generations. See Charitable and Exempt Organizations practice area.

We counsel executors and trustees, corporate and individual, on a variety of issues relating to the probate administration of decedents' estates and the administration of trusts. Frequently such estates are being administered outside of the United States, and we are called upon to work with trusts established under the laws of foreign jurisdictions. Our practitioners have also are experienced in serving as executors and trustees.

Our practice includes advising clients on the establishment of foreign trusts to achieve their planning objectives, including the protection of assets. We work with foreign counsel in a number of common law jurisdictions, including Bermuda, the Bahamas, Gibraltar and the Channel Islands, to implement structures allowing clients to avail themselves of the benefits of specialized aspects of foreign laws. We also advise foreign nationals considering establishing residency in the United States on pre-immigration strategies.

In addition to drafting wills and trusts for a broad range of families resident in the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, New York and Pennsylvania, we have recently engaged in the following representative assignments: