Center for Estate Planning

Hopefully, people plan for retirement long before they reach the age they want to retire.

CEP lawyers collaborate with the client’s accountant, financial planner, and other advisors to manage critical considerations by:

• Creating or updating estate planning documents.
• Anticipating and budgeting retirement living expenses and goals.
• Addressing concerns of heirs, beneficiaries, and dependent children.
• Reviewing retirement account beneficiaries.
• Contemplating long-term care costs.

When an individual passes away, trustees, personal representatives, and surviving family members encounter various legal and procedural issues, some of which can be settled in advance.

Working with tax professionals, financial advisors, and surviving relatives, CEP attorneys help clients overcome various hurdles, including:

• Immediately addressing funeral, burial, and other arrangements and expenses.
• Reviewing and understanding previously signed estate planning documents.
• Assisting in the orderly transition of a closely held business.
• Counseling on the division or securing of personal effects.
• Identifying and securing real property.
• Complying with tax requirements.

Resolving legal issues associated with a family tragedy can be complicated and stressful, especially when there are wrongful death claims.

From our experience handling thousands of cases across the U.S., CEP lawyers ensure wrongful death actions are appropriately recognized in probate administration processes. We understand how probate courts treat damages and costs resulting from such cases, and we advise the estate at every step, from inception to resolution.

Clients count on us to:

• Recommend and refer experienced attorneys to handle wrongful death suits.
• Carefully select and assemble professional teams of legal, tax, and financial experts to address the many issues involved in personal injury litigation.
• Help personal representatives meet their fiduciary duties and comply with legally required filing obligations and notices to heirs, beneficiaries, and potential wrongful death claimants.
• Provide counsel on tax consequences from damages payouts.

Since its founding, CEP has prepared comprehensive estate plans for thousands of clients. We understand the pitfalls that can arise from improperly executed or defective wills, trusts, and other estate planning documents.

CEP lawyers have appeared in probate courts across the U.S. to request that estate plans be set aside or defend attacks against properly executed estate planning documents. Because probate litigation can be complex, parties need to hire attorneys with the requisite skills and experience—like the attorneys at CEP—to address legal questions, such as:

• Were the estate planning documents properly executed and witnessed when the decedent signed them?
• Do the documents contain language that is open to legal challenges?
• Was there an issue about the decedent’s state of mind, physical condition, or mental competence when they signed their documents?
• Was there cause to suspect someone exerted undue influence on the decedent when the documents were created or signed?
• Is there an “in terrorem” clause in either a will or trust that would negate the interest of any party challenging the documents if they cannot establish probable cause?

Family disputes can be tremendously emotional, heightening people’s anxieties and bringing longstanding acrimony into the open. That’s when CEP lawyers step in.

Family members do not always agree when a loved one becomes terminally ill or passes away. Disagreements may arise over medical treatment, distribution of assets, and who has authority to make estate-related decisions. Some examples of contentious family conflicts CEP lawyers have successfully handled include:

• Failures of personal representatives, trustees, those vested with powers of attorney, or other fiduciaries to communicate with family members and be transparent in their actions.
• Disagreements between family members regarding medical care, advanced directives, and end-of-life protocols for an ill or dying parent.
• Challenges to powers of attorney, wills, and trusts claiming the decedent’s incapacity, particularly in instances of disinheritance.
• Transfers of family-held companies that do not include all family members.
• Disputes over distributions of jewelry, artwork, furniture, or personal effects.
• Non-blood family members (daughters-in-law, sisters-in-law, sons-in-law, unmarried partners, etc.) whose presence complicates or prevents resolution.

Grantors, trustees, successor trustees—these aren’t terms familiar to most people until someone experiences the death of a loved one.

Trust administration is the process of executing the terms of the trust as intended by the grantor (the one who created and funded the trust). A trustee oversees every trust; even a grantor can be a trustee while alive. When a trustee can no longer serve, a successor trustee takes their place.

Each successor trustee is obligated to discharge their fiduciary duties according to state law and the language in the trust. Doing so requires clear communication with beneficiaries and interested parties, acting expediently and efficiently on trust matters, and avoiding delay or conflict.

CEP counsels trustees on fiduciary duties and responsibilities that include:

• Reviewing and understanding estate planning documents.
• Immediately addressing funeral, burial, and related expenses.
• Conferring with critical legal, financial, and tax advisors.
• Providing statutory notices to beneficiaries.
• Publishing statutorily required claims.
• Identifying, accumulating, securing, and distributing trust assets.
• Quickly attending to any individual or trust liabilities.
• Complying with all tax filing requirements.

Probate administration involves not only proper handling of a decedent’s estate but also guardianship and conservatorship issues for minors and incapacitated adults.

Probate courts are empowered to supervise individuals in fiduciary roles, such as personal representatives of deceased people, guardians and conservators of adults who cannot legally make their own decisions, or guardians and conservators responsible for the care and maintenance of minor children.

Serving as a fiduciary requires the person to adhere to various processes and deadlines, and failing to do so could cause a probate court to remove them and appoint someone else, even a public administrator, to fulfill the role.

CEP lawyers advise fiduciaries on all aspects of their duties and at all stages of probate administration. We reduce anxiety, decrease expenses, and improve efficiency by helping them:

• File petitions correctly and on time to initiate probate proceedings.
• Identify and correctly serve interested parties when commencing probate proceedings.
• Prepare for probate court hearings.
• Properly file documents related to fiduciary appointments, including sureties, personal bonds, inventories, and acceptances of trust.
• Comply with annual filing and notice requirements.
• Satisfy all applicable tax obligations.