Estate Planning

Estate planning at Cavitch, Familo, Durkin & Frutkin goes well beyond the usual plans of most law firms. While wills and inter vivos revocable living trusts are the basic estate planning elements, we also implement plans involving more sophisticated features, such as "A-B" funded living trusts, qualifed personal residence trusts (QPRTS) grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATS), sales to defective grantor trusts, private annuities, family partnerships and limited liability companies, charitable trusts, private foundations, generation-skipping trusts, and dynasty trusts.  Even though we have a wealth of experience and expertise employing such techniques in the proper circumstances, our focus is always the client's goals and desires.  We will not, like some other planners, let the tax tail wag the dog of your planning without careful consideration and your understanding and approval.  In fact, non-tax goals such as leaving property in trust to be managed for the benefit of your loved ones, or to provide an incentive to younger generation family members to be productive in their own right and not simply rely on an inheritance from parents or grandparents are often very important considerations for a client's plan.

We often represent individuals and families who own and operate a wide range of businesses.  In that connection, we are frequently called upon to advise clients with respect to a variety of tools to aid in corporate succession planning to transition the ownership of a family business from an older generation of owners to a younger generation. In addition, we counsel our clients, and implement plans involving offshore and domestic creditor protection trusts.  Of course, we also offer a full range of services in connection with the administration of decedents' estates and trust administration.