Estate Planning

I draft, implement, and oversee estate plans, from the simplest wills to the most sophisticated tax-advantaged estate planning devices, such as family limited partnerships, grantor-retained annuity trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, and installment sales to grantor trusts.

I have nine years’ experience in estate planning, five of those with large Boston law firms, and I am thoroughly familiar with the tax and other issues that are involved in drafting and implementing sophisticated estate plans. My three primary areas of specialization within the field of estate planning are tax-advantaged transfer planning, estate planning for gay and lesbian couples, and estate planning for retirement assets.

I. Tax-Advantaged Transfer Planning. I specialize in leveraged gifting by means of such things as qualified personal residence trusts and gifts of partial interests in real estate; estate-freeze transactions using such devises as grantor-retained annuity trusts and installment sales to grantor trusts; charitable planning via split-interest trusts like charitable lead annuity trusts and charitable remainder unitrusts; marital deduction planning using revocable trusts and inter-vivos QTIP trusts; insurance planning using irrevocable insurance trusts; and gifting programs using nominee trusts, irrevocable trusts that are grantor trusts for income tax purposes, irrevocable trusts that are non-grantor trusts, and outright gifts.

II. Estate Planning for Gay and Lesbian Couples. Massachusetts is the only state in the union that allows same-sex marriage, and this in turn raises a number of interesting estate-planning issues. Since a Massachusetts same-sex marriage is not recognized by the federal government, no marital deduction will be allowed for federal tax purposes. This fact places certain strictures on what kind of tax planning can be done. Moreover, it is somewhat difficult to reconcile much of Massachusetts statutory law, which tends to have its antecedents in Massachusetts’s Puritan past, with the decision of the Supreme Judicial Court in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, which legalized same-sex marriage. For example, Massachusetts statutory law defines a child as illegitimate if the child’s mother and father are not married (see Massachusetts General Laws, c. 209C, §1). While the language of Goodridge arguably overrides this requirement with respect to, say, the question of the legitimacy of a child born to a lesbian couple, it does not override the requirement in the context of, for example, an already-existing trust. Problems can and frequently do arise when estate planning documents that were not drafted to include same-sex couples are applied to families that include gay and lesbian partners or spouses.

I am thoroughly familiar not only with the tax issues but also with the descent and distribution issues that arise in the context of estate planning for same-sex couples, both married and unmarried. Special care must be taken to ensure that outdated notions of family and legitimacy do not intervene to subvert the client’s wishes. My background in transfer-tax planning enables me, furthermore, to work around the fact that the federal government will not recognize the marriage when I am doing an estate plan for a same-sex married couple.
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III. Estate Planning with Retirement Assets. The tax rules that apply to qualified and non-qualified retirement plans are often complicated, and, when it comes to incorporating retirement plans into a comprehensive estate plan, are sometimes obscure as well. Naming a trust as beneficiary of a retirement plan, for example, while frequently necessary for transfer-tax planning purposes, can produce unintended results if the trust is not properly drafted. The Pension Protection Act of 2006 complicates matters even further. Since for a significant number of my clients their retirement plan is their primary asset, it is necessary for me to be familiar with the tax and other law that applies to retirement plans in the context of estate planning. I can then use my knowledge to draft appropriate beneficiary designations and to take advantage of income-tax deferral to the greatest extent possible.


Estate Administration

I specialize in administering estates of all sizes, including handling the probate court procedures, filling out and filing all tax returns, coordinating the various tax elections, arranging for the distribution of the estate pursuant to the estate plan, advising in connection with protection of the estate from claims of creditors, advising in connection with management of estate assets and liquidity requirements, and providing computerized accounting for the estate. In the context of estate administration, I am sometimes called upon to go to court, whether it be on a general petition to address some ancillary issue that has arisen in the course of the estate administration, or to defend an executor’s account, and I feel very comfortable doing so. I also have considerable experience with IRS audits and in negotiating with the IRS over valuation issues.
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Fiduciary Litigation

I represent plaintiffs and defendants in all areas of fiduciary litigation. I handle both sides of will contests and actions for breach of fiduciary duty, and am willing to take a case all the way through an appeal if necessary. I represent charitable entities in trust reformation actions and estate administration matters, where my clients include nationally-known charities. I frequently handle contested fiduciaries’ accounts, representing both fiduciaries and challengers in these matters. Fiduciary litigation ranges from about five percent to over fifty percent of my practice at any given time.