Extending far beyond the preparation of wills, Hughes Hubbard’s trusts and estates practice provides personalized, sophisticated legal services to a select group of U.S. and international clients in the areas of estate planning, fiduciary administration and charitable giving. We represent individuals, families, executors, trustees, guardians and charitable organizations.
While our attorneys, fiduciary accountants and administrators bring broad experience to the issues facing our clients, we recognize that every situation is unique and deserves a customized approach. Almost every aspect of our work includes consideration of the possible tax consequences. The tax laws continue to increase in complexity, but we still strive to draft concise documents that a non-lawyer can understand.
We provide expertise in estate and tax planning for unique assets — including art collections, closely held businesses and large blocks of stock in publicly traded companies — for family transfers as well as charitable purposes. Our clients receive personalized attention from experts committed to providing outstanding service with a successful track record in presenting cases before the Internal Revenue Service, United States Tax Court and state tax authorities.
We assist individuals in structuring tax-advantaged charitable gifts, including charitable lead and remainder trusts, gift annuities, pooled income funds, conservation easements and retirement accounts. We also assist clients in creating and administering family foundations. We advise charitable organizations on all types of charitable gifts, private foundation taxes and fiduciary responsibilities.
In the area of international estate planning, our trusts and estates attorneys have the knowledge and experience required to represent foreign nationals owning assets in the U.S., as well as U.S. citizens residing abroad. We assist international clients in creating corporations in the U.S. and assist in the development and administration of qualified domestic trusts and offshore trusts.
Our trusts and estates specialists work closely with attorneys in all of the firm’s offices in the administration of estates and trusts throughout the United States and abroad.
The broad spectrum of trusts and estates services offered to the firm’s private clients includes:
- Preparation of wills and trust agreements, both revocable and irrevocable, including: generation-skipping perpetual (dynastic) trusts, irrevocable life insurance trusts, charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, grantor retained interest trusts, irrevocable defective "grantor" trusts, and offshore trusts.
- Preparation of family limited partnerships and limited liability corporations.
- Preparation of documents for creation and administration of charitable foundations, whether in the form of trust agreements or corporations.
- Planning for special situations such as disability, marriage or change in domicile.
- Planning for special tax advantaged assets such as retirement accounts, executive benefits and life insurance.
- Representation of executors and trustees in the administration of estates and trusts.
- Representation of charitable foundations, both publicly supported and privately funded, including preparation of all required tax returns and attendance to all other compliance requirements.
- Representation of executors, trustees and beneficiaries in estate and trust litigation matters.
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