Goodwin Procter’s Trusts & Estate Planning Practice involves all aspects of estate, gift and income tax planning for lifetime and postmortem transfers. Our clients, with whom we build lasting relationships, include individuals, families, entrepreneurs and businesses requiring sophisticated tax and financial planning.

We are experts at structuring plans that provide for the lifetime and postmortem transfer and management of assets. This planning process typically involves financial projections and an analysis of the income tax, gift tax, and estate tax consequences of transfers. Our attorneys have decades of experience designing creative, effective plans and drafting the appropriate documentation to implement them. More sophisticated plans often include generation-skipping transfers, or transfers with a charitable component, and involve the use of grantor-retained annuity trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, family limited partnerships or limited liability companies.

We are actively involved in the settlement of estates on behalf of attorneys, other professionals or family members who are named as executors or administrators. We advise fiduciaries concerning the identification, valuation, taxation and disposition of a wide variety of probate and non-probate assets, and in the preparation of estate tax returns required by federal and state tax authorities. Our attorneys assist with the disposition of assets, including real estate; the settlement of claims against estates; and the funding of the various components of more complicated plans.

Our attorneys are often requested by clients to serve as executors and trustees. Because of these fiduciary relationships, our firm has a long tradition of managing assets and providing tax and financial advice to fiduciaries and beneficiaries.

We have successfully represented corporations, professional fiduciaries, financial institutions, charitable organizations and individuals in all aspects of trusts and estates litigation, risk management, and federal and state tax litigation. Our primary focus is to avoid litigation, but when litigation is necessary to protect the interests of our clients, we use our considerable capabilities and resources to devise effective litigation strategies. Our fiduciary, tax and financial expertise enables us to negotiate and craft sophisticated settlements that are acceptable to all parties. If advantageous settlement is not possible, our experienced trial lawyers successfully challenge or defend fiduciary decisions and actions.

We also advise nonprofit organizations and other institutional clients on tax, fiduciary and investment management issues.