Private Wealth

The Tax Department’s private wealth practice focuses on very high net worth families requiring the most sophisticated tax and estate planning available. These clients are usually private persons and we do not reveal their names. Often they own large, closely held corporations or are founders of public corporations. Our goal in working with these clients is to formulate estate plans and business arrangements that meet the client’s personal and business needs, while minimizing the tax costs (income, gift, estate, and generation-skipping tax) inherent in the transfer of wealth.

The Department’s work with these families includes comprehensive wealth transfer planning, business succession planning, corporate recapitalizations, the creation of limited partnerships and limited liability companies, buy-sell agreements and voting trusts, life insurance arrangements, employee stock ownership plans, and the creation of charitable foundations and charitable remainder trusts, as well as traditional wills and trusts, and estate and trust administration. The Department also provides independent tax advice regarding various investment and insurance strategies, including those for diversification of concentrated stock positions.

Within this part of our tax practice, we also provide legal counsel to trust companies and to public and private non-profit foundations. We also advise public charities in connection with their receipt of gifts and bequests.