Trusts & Estates Administration

We prepare all documents required in connection with estate and trust administration, including petitions for probate, inventories, accountings and asset transfer documents.

Members of our Trusts & Estates Practice Group have an aggregate of hundreds of years of experience and success in handling all aspects of estate and trust administration. At any one time, our lawyers are administering over 200 estates, as well as innumerable revocable and irrevocable trusts. Using our extensive computer network, we prepare and file sophisticated estate, inheritance, succession and fiduciary income tax returns for both federal and state taxing authorities. In connection with post-death tax planning, our team regularly resolves valuation issues, as well as questions related to tax elections, the marital deduction, disclaimers and generation-skipping transfer taxes.

Our lawyers have successfully handled numerous audits initiated by the Internal Revenue Service and the tax authorities of various states, and our clients take comfort in the knowledge that we handle such matters frequently and discreetly, maintaining a productive relationship with the IRS and state tax departments. We regularly counsel individual and corporate Trustees on all aspects of trust administration, including income and principal allocation and apportionment issues, legal requirements relating to trust investments, discretionary distribution decisions, the selection, resignation and removal of Trustees and other matters.

Our paralegals and fiduciary accountants, under the supervision of our attorneys, prepare computerized accountings for both individual and corporate Executors, Personal Representatives and Trustees.