Estate & Wealth Preservation Planning Attorneys
Perhaps nothing is more important and yet, so often neglected as planning for and protecting the future distribution of personal and business interests. The Estate and Wealth Preservation Planning attorneys at Burch & Cracchiolo are skilled in creating a solid succession plan for our client's assets. Whatever the extent of our clients' needs and desires, we work closely with them and a team of trusted advisors, including business consultants, accountants, insurance experts, wealth advisors and trust officers to ensure that the estate and wealth preservation plan is comprehensive and effective in achieving client goals.
Burch & Cracchiolo has extensive experience in all aspects of estate planning, succession planning, and probate. Our attorneys represent individuals, corporations, business owners, and nonprofit organizations and foundations in a broad range of trust, estate, and tax matters.
In conjunction with these planning services, we counsel our clients on the most beneficial structuring of executive compensation and employee benefits plans and assist in drafting buy-sell agreements, forming partnerships, corporations, ESOPS, and limited liability companies, and devising strategies for family succession planning (such as transferring interests in the business to children and grandchildren) and structuring a business to ensure the owner's estate will qualify for the deferred payment of estate tax.
Practicing Estate & Wealth Preservation Planning Attorneys in Phoenix, Arizona
Advance Directives for Health Care
An Advance Directive for Health Care provides guidance to family and medical providers regarding the extent of care a person desires when a person is no longer able to make decisions due to illness or incapacity. Our attorneys are well versed in the use of living wills and personal directives, such as powers of attorney and health care proxies.
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Estate and Gift Tax Planning
Along with our Tax attorneys, our Estate and Wealth Preservation attorneys provide estate planning advice to individuals interested in minimizing tax burden after death and passing wealth along to future generations. Our Tax attorneys are available to assist clients with tax controversies arising as a result of estate and gift tax strategies, or the lack thereof. Executives of large and emerging corporations and closely held businesses, including professional corporations owned by physicians and other professionals, are among those using our trust and estate planning services with special emphasis on tax planning.
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Probate and Estate Administration
The firm's probate practice includes formal and informal probate matters, as well as complex litigation concerning wills, trusts and other estate planning matters. Our probate representation includes will contests and other testamentary disputes, as well as representation of heirs and devisees in overseeing the administration of an estate in which they claim an interest. This practice area also includes controversy work with estate tax audits and the IRS.
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Special Needs Planning
Special Needs Trusts are essential tools for those who wish to ensure the proper care of beneficiaries who are physically or mentally challenged. We are experienced in creating such trusts while taking every precaution to protect access to government benefits that may be available. A number of our clients have taken advantage of this important provisions to provide care for their loved ones and peace of mind for themselves.
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Succession Planning and Wealth Preservation
Burch & Cracchiolo serves many family-owned businesses and entrepreneurs. Throughout the years, we have not only helped these clients build strong businesses, we have also counseled them on the importance of providing for their futures. Often, business owners are so consumed with the day-to-day decision making and long-term strategies of growing a business that they neglect planning for unexpected events, such as an unsolicited offer to purchase the business, the death of a key executive or the illness or incapacitation of an owner. At Burch & Cracchiolo, we believe it is our job to ensure that our clients anticipate these events and prepare a strategy that can be implemented in a manner that protects the interests and intentions of the owners and their families.
In succession planning, we bring together the legal team, including business lawyers and estate planning attorneys, with other critical advisors — bankers, CPAs, investment advisors — to create a plan that is led by the clients' needs and desires and understood by all. We advise on issues including business continuity, key man protection and taxation while providing the documentation necessary to ensure that our clients' desires can be carried out effectively and efficiently. We establish regular review periods with our clients to ensure that the plans and documents are adapted to the changes our clients' companies experience as well as the changes in family circumstances.
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Trust Administration
Burch & Cracchiolo is well versed in trust administration services, providing assistance to our clients in establishing, monitoring and reviewing procedures and implementation of trusts.
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Wills and Trusts
Burch & Cracchiolo is experienced in the various estate planning instruments available to meet the unique needs of our clients. We are proficient in the creation and administration of both revocable living trusts and irrevocable trusts and have experience assisting clients with living trusts, marital deduction and generation skipping trusts, insurance trusts, charitable remainder trusts. We also prepare qualified personal residence trusts, annuity trusts, charitable remainder trusts, trusts designed for facilitating gifts to minors and other specialty trusts and our practice includes drafting various types of wills, including marital deduction and generation-skipping transfer tax wills. We are skilled in the creation and implementation of gifting programs, development of plans for the effective use of life insurance, integration of pension and profit-sharing plan benefits and individual retirement accounts with the estate and other estate planning devices.
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