Trusts and Estates

Lifetime planning starts with a careful review of the client's assets, family circumstances, expectations and objectives. Murtha attorneys can be particularly helpful in many ways:

• Assisting in the acquisition, management and accumulation of assets. The firm can recommend financial institutions and financial and investment advisors in whom our attorneys have confidence. The firm's attorneys can also help clients manage their personal and financial affairs when family members, other professional advisors and corporate institutions do not meet these needs.
• Gifts to family members and nonprofit organizations are important elements in many estate plans. Murtha attorneys not only counsel individuals with respect to family gifts and charitable trusts, but they also serve as counsel to nonprofit organizations in developing and implementing planned giving programs.
• Land use and environmental planning can be very important when the client owns undeveloped real estate. Conservation easements and similar techniques can be effective in accomplishing an environmental objective as well as reducing income and estate tax obligations.
• Closely held businesses present special planning challenges, including the necessity of designing and implementing a plan for succession of ownership, often to the next generation, with minimal tax impact.
• Planning for disability insurance and health care has become an important issue for many of our clients. The firm assists clients in creating living wills to make clear their intentions with respect to unwanted health care intervention as well as health care and general powers of attorney to empower family members or other trusted agents to carry out their wishes.
• Planning for retirement starts with an effective method of accumulating retirement funds, usually through tax advantaged retirement programs. The firm's attorneys also assist with careful planning of withdrawal distributions and beneficiary designations which are essential to get the most out of these programs.
   

Murtha attorneys extend lifetime planning into consideration of the orderly and economic transfer of family wealth through proper estate planning:

• Lifetime and estate planning are carefully coordinated with the emphasis on consideration of alternative ways to accomplish our client's objectives and the development of a flexible plan to accomplish those objectives.
• Wills, revocable and irrevocable trusts, marital, credit shelter and generation skipping trusts are some of the techniques we use to meet the needs of each client. Life insurance plays a key role in effective estate planning by providing support for family members and meeting liquidity needs. Effective income, gift and estate tax strategies are needed to make best use of this important resource.
• Charitable giving techniques can be very useful in reducing estate taxes; these and other tax strategies are employed not as ends in themselves, but to achieve identified objectives.
   

Murtha Cullina represents corporate and individual fiduciaries in all aspects of the administration of decedents' estates and living and testamentary trusts, including resolution of disputes and federal and state tax audits. The firm's attorneys seek to develop and maintain compatible working relationships with family members and other beneficiaries. Although most estates are settled without contest or dispute, the firm's expertise can be very helpful in minimizing and resolving difficulties between the parties.

From time to time, clients ask us to serve as executor or trustee because they have confidence in the attorney who works with them. Murtha partners accept these responsibilities when it is a clear client preference over other alternatives. We may serve as trustee to assist in accumulating and managing assets during the client's lifetime, and may also serve as executor and trustee for the benefit of the client's family.

Our partners serving as fiduciaries are supported by the firm's Fiduciary Services Program, which includes institutional custodial services for securities, on-line computerized access to all account information, investment management assistance from carefully chosen professional investment advisers, and periodic reports with close, personal attention to client and beneficiary needs.