Estate Planning
Graham & Dunn’s Estate Planning Team provides broad and comprehensive services involving all aspects of the transfer and administration of family assets to the next generation. Achieving the optimum result for our clients in this area depends on a careful blending of legal expertise (including knowledge of estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer taxes) with a client’s personal philosophy and family goals.
SUCCESSION AND ESTATE PLANNING
- Basic estate planning documents (wills, trusts, durable powers of attorney for financial and medical decision making)
- Planning with retirement assets
- Limited liability company and limited partnership agreements
- Shareholder agreements
- Prenuptial and postnuptial agreements
- Planning for charitable contributions
- Formation and ongoing operation of charitable foundations
- Planning for lifetime gifts and generation-skipping transfers
ESTATE AND TRUST ADMINISTRATION
The firm’s practice encompasses the legal procedures to probate a decedent’s estate and to administer continuing trusts. Moreover, the practice includes:
- Preparation of estate tax returns
- Advising fiduciaries (corporate and individual) on the tax elections available to conserve wealth and expedite the transfer of assets to beneficiaries
- Assisting in asset valuation
- Assisting in reorganizations and sales of business assets
- Post-mortem income tax planning, including timing of distributions from qualified employee plans
- Marital deduction analysis
- Estate tax IRS examinations
- Controversies among beneficiaries
- Resolving environmental liability issues affecting decedents’ estates while minimizing liability risks to fiduciaries and beneficiaries.
Team Leader: Marcia K. Fujimoto
Team Members: Wendy S. Goffe, Rochelle L. Haller, John T. John, Jack G. Strother, Nicki J. Brown, Kim Sandstrom, Donna M. Sutherland
