In Brief

Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP's Individual Clients Department represents, on a worldwide basis, U.S. and foreign individuals and their families, the private businesses they own and control, family offices, individual and corporate fiduciaries, charitable organizations and other law firms, all in connection with the preservation, management and transfer of wealth. We advise individual clients and their fiduciaries regarding the planning and administration of significant and complex estates and trusts. When the circumstances arise, we also represent our clients in the litigation of contested trust and estate matters.

Representative Clients

Our clients are highly diverse and include individuals and their families whose estates have been substantial for many generations, private investors and venture capitalists, entertainers, highly-compensated executives, family offices, individual and corporate fiduciaries, closely-held businesses, charitable organizations and other law firms. We conduct a vigorous domestic and international practice and advise both U.S. and foreign individuals, banks and trust companies and law firms regarding U.S. trust and estate, corporate and tax law matters, and assist individual clients and their families in their worldwide estate planning. We advise charitable organizations in connection with their formation, on-going compliance with state and federal corporate and tax law and sophisticated techniques of charitable giving.

We employ a multi-disciplinary approach in advising our clients in connection with their estate planning, and work closely with our colleagues in other departments of the firm to bring together our collective expertise in trusts and estates, income and transfer tax planning, corporations and partnerships, real estate, entertainment, securities, employee benefit plans, intellectual property and charitable organizations. In this way, we bring to bear all relevant areas of law to design a comprehensive and flexible plan for our clients that takes into account their current financial and personal circumstances, and achieves their lifetime and testamentary objectives regarding the management and transfer of their wealth. In this process, we also work closely with our clients’ other professional advisors, including bankers, accountants, insurance agents and investment advisors, as well as their local and non-U.S. counsel, to ensure that their estate plans will not only maximize the opportunity for income and transfer tax savings, but also complement their overall financial and business arrangements. We are sensitive to our clients’ concerns regarding the particular financial, medical and other needs of their families, and thus design estate and business plans that reflect our clients’ most personal wishes, while providing the flexibility to respond and adapt to unforeseen circumstances.

Principal Areas of Focus

Estate Planning

To assist our individual clients in realizing their estate and business planning objectives, we employ sophisticated and innovative techniques, including complex Wills, special kinds of trusts (such as grantor retained annuity trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, generation-skipping dynastic trusts sitused in tax-favored jurisdictions, insurance trusts, business trusts, voting trusts, asset protection trusts and charitable lead and charitable remainder trusts), family limited partnerships, corporate recapitalizations, shareholders' and redemption agreements, private annuities and installment sales. Our advice is broader than merely how best to achieve tax minimization and is intended to preserve family wealth through generations by means of highly flexible planning. Because of the substantial income and transfer taxes imposed on IRAs and pension, profit sharing, 401(k) and other employee benefit plan accounts, our strategies include ways to reduce taxes on these increasingly important sources of wealth. The estate plans we design for our clients often incorporate the sophisticated use of life insurance (such as life insurance trusts, split dollar insurance arrangements and joint and survivor insurance) to augment estates, provide liquidity and preserve wealth. Finally, we represent our clients before the Internal Revenue Service and state tax authorities in connection with complex income and gift tax audits.

International Estate Planning

We counsel non-U.S. citizens, foreign banks and foreign law firms regarding a wide range of international estate planning matters, including the creation of off-shore trusts and other entities, and the impact of U.S. probate, income and transfer tax laws (and U.S. tax treaties) on our clients’ worldwide business and estate planning.

Charitable Planning

We advise clients how best to achieve their charitable objectives in the light of the highly technical income, estate and gift tax provisions related to charitable giving. Our advice may involve creation of a charitable foundation in trust or corporate form, preparation of its application for tax-exempt status, and administration of the organization (including corporate and tax compliance).

Guardianships

We also represent our clients in conservatorship, guardianship and committeeship proceedings, including proceedings related to the administration of assets for disabled persons.

Health and Long-Term Care

Individual clients are becoming increasingly concerned with planning for their future health care and the management of their wealth in the event of disability. We prepare living Wills, health care proxies and durable powers of attorney tailored to our clients’ special needs or circumstances so that their financial affairs and healthcare are handled appropriately during any period of disability. These instruments express our clients’ wishes concerning the continuation or termination of health care treatment, the appointment of a health care decisionmaker or the appointment of an attorney in fact to manage their financial affairs.

Administration of Estates and Trusts

We counsel individual and corporate executors and trustees in connection with the administration of complex estates and trusts.

We actively participate in the administration of our clients’ estates and assist their executors in the collection and valuation of our clients’ assets, prepare final income tax returns and the federal and state estate tax returns, represent executors in tax audits, assist in the final distribution of estate assets to the beneficiaries and help executors prepare and settle their final accounts.

We also advise trustees in the administration of all types of inter vivos and testamentary trusts. For example, we counsel trustees regarding the interpretation of the trust instrument, the scope of their powers under applicable law, legal issues relating to the exercise of discretionary powers, the purchase and sale of significant trust assets (including business interests) and the preparation and settlement of their final accounts.

Where necessary, we represent executors and trustees in litigating contested matters relating to the probate of Wills, the administration of estates and trusts, and settlement of their accounts.

Applied Expertise

Our attorneys are frequent speakers and authors on the topic of estate planning. Their articles appear in such industry publications as Estates, Gifts and Trusts Journal and Trusts & Estates Magazine.