Overview
It’s not simply about you. It’s about planning for the future: family members, business succession, future generations and the philanthropic organizations you care about.
At Kegler, Brown, Hill & Ritter, we know how important it is to manage issues involving family matters, capital and values. We recognize that this subject is extremely confidential and personal, and we value the trust clients place in us. The attorneys in our estate planning and probate practice provide sophisticated and practical advice to help our clients structure a plan to achieve their personal goals
Advising clients in the accumulation, retention and disposition of their estates - whether of a substantial or modest nature - involves sensitive issues. Our services include income, estate, gift, and generation-skipping tax planning as well as business planning. At Kegler Brown, our attorneys know that structuring a plan to minimize exposure to taxation ensures the greatest benefit from a legacy.
Counseling clients in personal estate planning constitutes a significant area of our practice. Our experienced attorneys advise clients on wills and trusts for both tax and personal purposes, ranging from children’s education to aging parents’ care. We also counsel on planned charitable giving, including utilizing existing tax laws to achieve the maximum gifting possible.
We Help Clients:
- Minimize or eliminate federal gift, estate and generation-skipping taxes on millions of dollars of transfers, often without loss of control or access during life.
- Fund charitable gifts and legacies mostly or entirely with government dollars through tax savings that allow clients and their family members to direct resources to the philanthropic causes important to them.
Technology
In today’s world, technology plays a significant role in estate planning, probate and trust administration. Our attorneys prepare sophisticated financial reports, projecting the tax benefits and the flow through of funds to beneficiaries resulting from various estate planning techniques. Use of client-friendly illustrations not only makes complicated strategies easy to understand, but also greatly assists in the decision-making process.
Estate Planning & Business Succession
Estate planning and business succession go hand in hand. This is especially the case when a family business is involved. Among the issues to consider are the following:
- Gifting
- Life Insurance Planning
- Equitable Treatment of Active versus Non-Active Family Members
- Liquidity
- Wealth Preservation
- Wealth Transfers
- Trust Planning
- Retirement Plan and IRA Beneficiary Designations
It is critical to understand and plan for the liquidity needs of a family that owns a successful business. The starting point is usually getting the proper valuation of the business - this is key to proper estate planning. With this information, our firm can assist the family with life insurance planning, gifting, and strategic ownership of the business to address transfer taxes that may be associated with the death of the founder of the business. This planning must dovetail with effective business succession.
In the context of business succession, the people issues are critical to the estate plan. Once these issues are successfully addressed, we can then assist the family through utilization of tax effective tools to implement the plan. Among these tools are the following:
- Life Insurance Trusts
- Buy-Sell Agreements
- Split Dollar Life Insurance Plans
- Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts
- Sales to Defective Trusts
- Family Limited Partnerships
- Charitable Remainder Trusts
- Long-Term Rental Arrangements
An estate plan must take into consideration the unique factors associated with business ownership and the necessitated succession planning. The success of the family business is often critical to support the needs of the survivors of the deceased business owner. Whether or not a surviving spouse succeeds to the business, it is often the case that continuity of the business is important to provide the means to support the surviving spouse. A proper estate plan can often mean the difference between a successful or unsuccessful succession plan.
Probate
Kegler Brown’s extensive probate administration practices in the handling of estates, trusts and guardianships. Our trusted attorneys also provide expertise in probate litigation of these matters.
Aside from being active in probate courts throughout Ohio, SCG Legal — of which Kegler Brown is a founding member — is also a critical tool for our clients. Through this organization, as well as the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, we have direct links to the leading attorneys worldwide, providing up-to-date information and experienced counsel to our clients in a timely and cost-effective manner.
Additionally, we counsel executors, trustees and guardians, whether individual or corporate, in the proper discharge of their fiduciary duties. We also represent fiduciaries in a variety of litigation relating to wills and trusts, and matters involving alleged fiduciary liability.
Planning for the future means so much more than what happens to your financial holdings- it’s about planning for the people and causes that have become a part of your success.