Mr. Opferman is the chair of Sonnenschein's national trusts and estates practice group. He has extensive experience in estate and tax planning for wealthy individuals and family businesses. He also has represented numerous not-for-profit organizations with respect to charitable and deferred giving programs and has counseled individual clients regarding the tax and non-tax implications of charitable giving. Mr. Opferman has worked extensively with individual and corporate fiduciaries in the settlement of decedents' estates and distribution of testamentary and inter vivos trusts.
In the area of estate planning, Mr. Opferman has assisted clients in planning for the generation-skipping transfer tax, including establishing lifetime and testamentary trusts and exercising powers of appointment over exempt trusts. He has counseled U.S. citizens and trusts with respect to alternatives for foreign investments and the attendant U.S. income, gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer tax consequences. He has also assisted clients in creating grantor retained annuity trusts and qualified personal residence trusts. He has worked with clients establishing and operating family partnerships and limited liability companies. He has counseled senior executives of leading corporations regarding alternatives for exercise and transfer of stock options. He has also assisted substantial families in establishing and operating family offices. He has represented wealthy individuals and families in negotiating and preparing premarital agreements. He has also assisted clients in establishing irrevocable life insurance trusts and advised them about second-to-die life insurance.
Mr. Opferman has advised charitable organizations with respect to alternatives for present and deferred gifts, including charitable trusts, gift annuities and remainder interests in personal residences. He has worked with individual and not-for-profit clients in drafting, funding and administering charitable remainder and charitable lead trusts and maintaining pooled income funds. He has also worked with wealthy families in establishing and operating private foundations.
Mr. Opferman also advises individual and corporate fiduciaries with respect to probate and non-probate estate administration and post-mortem tax planning, including advising fiduciaries with respect to closely held business assets. He has experience with multi-state estate administration and representing individual and corporate Trustees and Executors in Federal estate and gift tax audits and various state estate and inheritance tax matters.
Mr. Opferman is a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and a member of its Estate and Gift Tax Committee. He is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University School of Law, where he teaches estate and gift tax and estate planning. He has served as an adjunct professor in the graduate tax program at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, where he taught estate planning for LL.M. candidates. He also is a member of the board of directors of Bishop Anderson Institute and a founding member and director of the Heartland Literary Society.
Mr. Opferman currently is general counsel for Episcopal Charities and Community Services and previously served as a Trustee and Vice President-Finance of ECCS. He also serves on the Northwestern University Estate Planning Advisory Council, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Planned Giving Advisory Council, the Ravinia Festival Association Planned Giving Advisory Committee, and The Art Institute of Chicago Gift Planning Advisory Committee. He has served as a lecturer and author for the Practicing Law Institute, the Notre Dame Tax and Estate Planning Institute, the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education, the American Bankers Association National Graduate Trust School, the Chicago-Kent Federal Tax Institute, the Illinois Bankers Association Trust and Investment Management School, the National CLE Conference on Estate Planning, and other professional organizations on the subjects of the generation-skipping transfer tax, marital trust funding, income taxation of trusts and estates, charitable giving and other subjects. He is a past Chair of Division A of the Federal Tax Committee of the Chicago Bar Association and active in the American Bar Association Section of Taxation, Estate and Gift Tax Committee.