The
Barber Law Firm’s Tax and Estate Planning Practice Group assists individuals,
families, and family businesses with conceiving and implementing
sophisticated personal wealth transfers and business succession planning.
Our attorneys are proficient in helping clients to formulate and implement
their planning objectives in a tax-efficient manner. They are well-equipped to
handle even the most complex estate planning situations.
Our
practice is built with an appreciation of the needs of families and family
enterprises. This appreciation is backed by our knowledge of tax law and
the laws of business entities. The Tax and Estate Planning Practice Group's
attorneys are adept in the continually changing federal and state tax laws and
their implications. We are well-versed in estate and gift taxes,
generation-skipping transfer taxes, and fiduciary income taxes. While
every succession plan is unique to the individual needs of a family, business,
or both, our sophisticated attorneys adapt a client's personal needs and
desires to current state and federal regulations.
We
work with our clients to design and implement plans for both business succession and changes in management and ownership of family businesses.
Business needs include planning for transition events, management, and the
near- and long-term liquidity requirements of the business. The needs of
the family include equitable treatment of family members, consideration of the
needs of the management and non-management members, planning to implement
charitable goals, and planning for personal liquidity needs during life and to
satisfy estate tax burdens.
We
provide counsel in all phases of estate succession planning to protect
individual and family wealth from excess state and federal taxation and from
third parties. A plan may include preparation of wills and trusts and developing a strategy for minimizing estate or gift tax liabilities. It could include the
formation of family limited partnerships, corporations, limited liability
companies, private foundations, and other entities relating to the ownership
and transfer of family wealth, as well as asset protection. Our attorneys
prepare revocable and irrevocable trusts, charitable trusts, life insurance
trusts, Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs), Intentionally Defective Grantor Income Trusts (IDGIT), premarital and post-marital agreements, and
durable powers of attorney for health care and property.
Our
attorneys also help individuals, businesses, and nonprofit entities with an
array of complex tax and business matters, providing creative structuring
solutions from the initial stage of a project through the completion of a
transaction. To qualify and preserve tax exempt status, we assist in the formation, management, and compliance of
nonprofit entities, including private foundations, operating foundations, and
public charities.