Ward and Smith's Year in Review: Celebrating Excellence, Resilience, and Growth in 2024
December 20, 2024
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An estate plan is a set of documents that everyone needs to plan for life's uncertainties.
Not having an estate plan in place can raise many issues.
How do you prevent your assets from ending up with unintended beneficiaries?
Will your children be protected? Who will manage your affairs if you become incapacitated?
With sound legal advice and a thoughtful estate plan, many of these issues can be put to rest.
We offer a variety of estate planning services, including the preparation of wills and trusts, and associated documents, such as revocable trusts, durable powers of attorney, health care powers of attorney, and living wills.
After careful consultation with clients, we design estate plans to ensure the appropriate disposition of clients' assets and the orderly and cost-effective administration of their estates. We give particular attention to reducing estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes and assist clients with lifetime gifting programs, including planning for the transition of family-owned businesses from older to younger generations and planning for charitable giving and the use of private foundations. Gifting strategies include the use of life insurance trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, generation-skipping trusts, family limited partnerships, limited liability companies, "tax defective" grantor trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, and charitable remainder and charitable lead trusts.
Because of escalating health care costs and increased life spans, we also emphasize planning for disability, including using powers of attorney and living wills, and planning for eligibility for government health care benefits.
Our Trusts and Estates attorneys have extensive experience in creating estate plans to meet any need.
Whether you need a simple will or complex tax planning, it will be crafted with keen insight. Contact a member of our Trusts and Estates group today to start planning.
Call us at 800.998.1102.
We are your established legal network with offices in Asheville, Greenville, New Bern, Raleigh, and Wilmington, NC.
