LeClair Ryan

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Private Wealth Services

The attorneys on our Estate Planning (Private Wealth Services) practice team are committed to helping clients create and implement plans for transferring family wealth that fulfill their personal and family objectives, while also working to minimize the impact of gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer taxes. We enjoy working closely with our clients to provide for the financial security of cherished family members and to ensure the careful administration and transfer of homes, businesses, savings and other assets acquired through years of diligent labor and careful investment.

We work closely with our clients’ accountants, insurance representatives and other financial advisors to obtain, review and understand our clients’ relevant financial and personal information, and then recommend incisive planning strategies and documents to implement our client’s objectives. We have extensive experience in drafting wills, all manner of revocable and irrevocable trusts, powers of attorney and medical directives and routinely prepare documents for high net worth clients who have significant tax-planning goals, including wills and trusts designed to fully utilize the client’s estate tax exemption and generation skipping transfer tax exemption.

We also help our clients take advantage of more sophisticated and specialized tax-planning vehicles designed to provide additional tax savings during the client’s lifetime and at death. These vehicles include irrevocable life insurance trusts, family partnerships and LLCs, qualified personal residence trusts, grantor-retained annuity trusts (GRATs), charitable remainder and lead trusts.

Many of our clients own closely-held businesses and we work closely with those clients to develop plans for the effective and efficient transfer of the business to family or non-family members. This planning might involve restructuring or recapitalizing the business, developing agreements among existing shareholders to provide for the effective transfer of ownership and control of the business, the creation of buy-sell arrangements to provide for the prearranged sale of an interest upon death of an owner, and evaluation of alternatives for funding the purchase of an interest, including creative uses of life insurance where appropriate.

Our team represents executors and heirs in the proper administration of decedents’ estates and trusts, including tax-planning, governmental filings and compliance with state and local tax agencies, the IRS and local clerks and commissioners of accounts. We routinely advise and represent clients with respect to tax appeals, litigation and audits.

Unfortunately, many times after the death of a family member, disputes arise among members of the family, and often with non-family members, as to the proper administration of the decedent’s estate and property. Such disputes often involve will contests and complaints of undue influence or lack of capacity. Our attorneys are very experienced in the negotiation and litigation of such disputes on behalf of executors, trustees, advisors and both individual and charitable beneficiaries.

Our Estate Planning services include:
* Estate Planning
* Trusts and Estate Litigation
* Estate Administration
* Trust Administration
* Tax Return Preparation
* Tax Controversy
* Charitable Entity Formation

LeClair Ryan
951 E Byrd St - 8th Floor
Richmond VA 23219
Tel: 804 783-2003
Fax: 804 783-2294

LeClairRyan is an entrepreneurial law firm that provides business counsel and client representation in matters of corporate law and high-stakes litigation.