Tax & Estate Planning
Practice Group

Assisting individuals, families, and family businesses with developing and implementing personal wealth transfers and business succession planning through wills, trusts and other estate planning devices.

Tax & Estate Planning Practice Group

Assisting individuals, families, and family businesses with developing and implementing personal wealth transfers and business succession planning through wills, trusts, and other estate planning devices.

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.

Services

  • Preparing wills, trusts, intra-family agreements, pre-marital and post-marital agreements
  • Counseling regarding the structuring of estate and other valuation freeze techniques
  • Handling the day-to-day administration of complex estates and trusts, including those holding a substantial ownership in real estate and business enterprises
  • Counseling on business structuring and governance issues, including the creation of family limited partnerships and limited liability companies
  • Advising businesses on succession issues and establishing plans to transfer ownership and control of businesses to the next generation of owners through vehicles such as “buy-sell” agreements and reorganizations
  • Creating charitable gift and family gift programs, including the preparation of private foundation charitable trusts
  • Assisting highly-compensated executives with compensation planning for stock options, sophisticated life insurance arrangements, and other benefits
  • Providing tax advice in connection with employee benefits matters
  • Advising on life insurance planning techniques
  • Representing clients before the Internal Revenue Service at all levels, including audits and tax litigation
  • Formulating efficient tax structures for mergers and acquisitions
  • Structuring and counseling with respect to taxable and tax-free mergers, reorganizations, acquisitions, and divestitures
  • Counseling regarding the tax and business aspects of partnerships, limited liability companies, and grantor trusts
  • Helping with organizational filings and annual tax filings for not-for-profit organizations
  • Providing tax planning for business transactions regarding limited liability companies, C corporations, S corporations, and partnerships

Team of Attorneys