Wealth transfer.

Wealth-transfer work is where the practice’s earlier biglaw training still lives. These are technical vehicles. Done correctly, they remove substantial appreciated value from a taxable estate while keeping the settlor’s practical control of the family’s affairs intact. Done incorrectly — and they are often done incorrectly — they either fail to achieve the transfer, or they collapse on audit, or they create a family-governance problem that outlasts the attorney who drafted them.

An irrevocable life insurance trust, properly drafted and properly administered, removes the proceeds of a large life policy from the taxable estate. An ILIT that is drafted well but whose Crummey notices are never sent — which is most of them — gradually loses its protection. We draft ILITs that we then administer ourselves on an annual cycle. That is the only way they actually work.

A SLAT is a useful vehicle for a married couple with significant combined wealth and different family-of-origin circumstances. It is not a default tool. A GRAT is useful for concentrated positions expected to appreciate — and less useful for diversified portfolios. Each of these is a specific instrument for a specific pattern of assets; the firm declines to sell them to families who do not match the pattern.

The generation-skipping transfer tax is the single most-misunderstood provision in the Internal Revenue Code. We work with the family’s existing CPA — or, where appropriate, bring in an independent tax attorney for a second opinion — to coordinate GST-exemption allocation across the plan. Coordination matters more than cleverness.