Services
Specific services provided to clients include the following:
- Providing basic domestic estate-planning services such as drafting a simple Last Will & Testament.
- Providing basic related estate-planning documents such as
- Power of Attorney
- Medical Power of Attorney
- Directive to Physicians (a.k.a. Living Will)
- Declaration of Guardian
- Providing advanced estate-planning services by drafting multiple trusts to minimize or eliminate federal wealth-transfer taxes including Family Trusts, Marital Trusts (including QDOTs and QTIPs), Credit Shelter Trusts, Generation-skipping Trusts, Special Spendthrift Trusts, and Incentive Trusts.
- Providing advanced Charitable Trusts.
- Providing for "estate freeze" plans to remove asset appreciation from a client's estate in order to reduce federal estate taxes (e.g., Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs), asset sales to irrevocable "grantor" trusts using self-canceling installment notes, etc.).
- Structuring domestic and offshore asset-protection plans.
- Structuring plans for estate tax reduction or elimination.
- Structuring plans for income tax deferral and reduction.
- Integrating an existing domestic estate plan with an offshore asset-protection plan.
- Forming both Domestic and Foreign Trusts, Limited Liability Partnerships, and Limited Liability Companies.
- Arranging Private Placement Insurance (life, business, professional license) for asset protection, retirement planning, and tax deferral and minimization.
- Forming corporations (C-corps and S-corps), General Partnerships, Family Limited Partnerships (FLPs), Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs), International Business Companies (IBCs), and Limited Liability Companies (LLCs).
- Protecting clients before and after financial problems arise (e.g., lawsuits). While it is always best to implement an asset-protection plan before problems arise, it is possible to perform some asset-protection planning after a lawsuit is filed.
- Protecting fixed assets (e.g., real estate) via "equity stripping" arrangements to ensure that if a trial lawyer tries to seize the asset in order to satisfy a judgment, the asset will be subject to a prior lien, causing the trial lawyer to receive nothing (while the funds received from the arrangement earn interest in a foreign trust account not subject to the trial lawyer's judgment).
- Enabling clients to become completely judgment proof against all creditors (note that certain debts such as child support would not be included, nor can an asset-protection plan stop a judge from placing someone in jail due to holding them in contempt of court for failure to pay child support).
- Drafting tax opinion letters (covered opinions) under IRS Circular 230 for avoidance of penalties for certain taxpayer deductions, filing positions, etc.
- Providing pre-approved flat-fee billing for services rendered.
- Providing plans that may be tax neutral (i.e., the offshore plan will generate interest/dividend income, and this income will be taxed to the client just as if the client had "earned" the income here in the United States) or the plan may be tax advantaged. All planning is perfectly legal and will be in full compliance with all state and federal laws.
- Making arrangements for any requested private-placement life insurance products (which may provide a vehicle for tax-deferred growth for investments held within the life insurance policy).