The Trusts and Estates attorneys at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings provide sound and creative advice to individuals and families in structuring estate plans to meet their needs. We guide our clients through the maze of the estate tax rules to develop estate plans that meet both their tax and non-tax goals. In developing and implementing estate plans for our clients, our attorneys not only discuss wills (or living trusts) with our clients, we also provide counsel on a wide range of other tax and non-tax issues including:
- Business succession planning, including buy sell agreements
- Asset protection planning, including the use of asset protection trusts
- Retirement benefit planning
- Beneficiary designation planning
- Techniques to reduce the value of client's estate, including irrevocable trusts, gifting programs, and qualified personal residence trusts
- Techniques to freeze the value of a client's estate, such as grantor retained annuity trusts and sales to intentionally defective grantor trusts
- Charitable giving techniques, such as charitable remainder trusts that may provide our clients with income, estate and gift tax benefits
- Advance health care plans and/or living wills
We represent a wide range of clients, including business executives, owners of closely held businesses, highly compensated employees and many other individuals and families with a net worth of anywhere from zero to millions.
In the area of probate law, we represent the personal representatives and beneficiaries of estates. Our practice is focused on guiding personal representatives through the probate process and preparing both federal estate and state inheritance tax returns. We also engage in post-mortem planning to minimize estate taxes. In the event of a will or trust contest or other probate litigation, our Trusts and Estates attorneys work closely with the firm's litigation attorneys to resolve the dispute in the best interest of the client using a timely and cost-effective approach.