Donahue Gallagher Woods LLP maintains a trusts and estate practice serving individuals, including business owners, executives and professionals. The services we provide include evaluating a client’s situation, reviewing alternatives and recommending strategies to structure estates and to protect assets, creating the necessary documents and—when necessary—representing our clients’ interests in related disputes.

We believe that proper estate planning must be based upon a thorough understanding of the relationships between our client and each of our client’s beneficiaries and their respective personal styles, capabilities and needs. In addition, we must have in-depth knowledge of our clients’ personal and financial objectives as well as their resources. With that knowledge, our estate planning attorneys can design and implement individually crafted estate planning strategies that accomplish our clients’ personal and financial goals.

We have a diverse client base, ranging from individuals with modest net worth to high-end clients who possess substantial assets. Our clients may be U.S. citizens or foreign nationals, residents or nonresidents. Since our clients may own small businesses (or may be officers and substantial shareholders of larger businesses), investment real estate and stock options, counseling on estate planning may involve discussions on one or more of the following: the use of entities to assist in management and transfer of ownership, which, as a side benefit, may result in the reduction in value of the taxable estate; buy-sell agreements in family businesses to ease the transition to the next generation; gifting programs to reduce estate tax; and recommendations on the disposition of retirement benefits to maximize their effectiveness. We can illustrate the impact of the various estate planning strategies by the preparation of estate and gift tax projections. We also handle matters involving international assets subject to foreign laws for both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals.

If our clients are business owners, we work with the firm’s business law attorneys to structure the business to facilitate the advantageous transfer of the business to partners, family members or employees upon the retirement or death of the principal. In conjunction with the firm’s business law attorneys, we also analyze the impact of business mergers on the long term estate planning objectives of owners and executives.

We have expertise in drafting and implementing a wide range of estate planning vehicles. Depending on our clients’ resources and estate planning objectives, we establish living (inter vivos) trusts, family limited partnerships, special needs trusts, trusts that will manage business affairs if necessary and many other kinds of irrevocable trusts, including charitable remainder trusts, trusts for minors, generation skipping trusts, life insurance trusts, Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts and Defective Grantor Trusts, the latter in close collaboration with the client’s CPA.

We also have expertise in handling trust and estate administration after death, including probate of estates. We represent executors, administrators, testamentary trustees, conservators and beneficiaries throughout the post death administrative process, assisting them in following accounting formats required by the courts and preparing federal estate tax returns for trustees and executors. We work with fiduciary’s accountants to ensure that the required income tax returns are complete and correct. In conjunction with our litigation department, we also represent parties in contested will and trust litigation.

In addition to providing counsel and implementing estate planning strategies, we assist our clients in the planning and preparation of advance health care directives (formerly known as durable powers of attorney) for their health care decisions, property management requirements, and gifts in order to avoid the need for establishment of conservatorships.

If you have any questions regarding the firm's trusts or estate planning practice, please contact either Wilfrid Roberge, Jr. ( ) at 510.451.0544, 925.746.7770 or Annette M. Knox ( ) at 925.746.7770.