GableGotwals’ attorneys have extensive experience and expertise in estate planning. We work closely with clients to identify goals, plan for contingencies, and create a comprehensive, efficient, and flexible estate plan to assure that financial and personal goals are achieved.
At its most fundamental level, estate planning provides basic legal tools designed to keep the management of clients’ property and health care out of guardianship court during their lifetime and out of probate court at death. These tools include:
- Durable powers of attorney,
- Advance directives,
- A properly funded asset management trust,
- A properly-structured beneficiary designations for qualified plan accounts, and
- A simple last will and testament, which has the asset management trust as its residual beneficiary.
Beyond these basic estate plan objectives, estate planning also focuses on the transfer of property in tax-efficient ways that are also consistent with clients’ personal and relational situations. This planning involves:
- A careful review of the client’s current estate assets,
- Consideration of possible appreciation in the value of the client’s assets,
- Tailoring the estate plan to the dynamics of the client’s family, and the particular needs and circumstances of the client’s beneficiaries, and
- Drafting for the client’s desired timing and method of giving beneficiaries rights to enjoy or to take possession of property.
The estate planning process can also include:
- Planning for succession of ownership and control of the family business,
- Providing for efficient equity transfers through buy-sell and other arrangements,
- Reducing clients’ taxable estates through lifetime gifting programs,
- Achieving clients’ charitable and tax objectives through charitable gifting techniques,
- Planning and drafting for the tax-efficient receipt of life insurance proceeds, for funding the educational goals and health care needs of family members, for structuring tax-efficient transfers of wealth to successive generations, for coordinating the transfer to beneficiaries of tax-qualified accounts with the transfer of other asset transfers,
- Drafting provisions that limit the devastating financial effect of family dysfunctions, and
- Planning and drafting for protecting assets from the claims of creditors.
The tools the estate planner uses are many and varied and include the following, in addition to the basic legal tools described above:
- Structuring assets to be held in legal entities, such as limited partnerships and limited liability companies,
- Different kinds of trusts, such as income tax-efficient grantor trusts, life insurance trusts, special needs trusts for a disabled beneficiary, charitable trusts, basis step-up trusts, asset protection trusts, and
- Tools for Medicaid and long-term care planning
Probate and Administration of Estates
GableGotwals’ attorneys regularly provide Oklahoma probate law advice and probate court representation.
Probate can include representing individuals and families in settling a family member’s estate, including the court procedures necessary to determine the content and nature of an estate, complete the payment of debts, expenses, and taxes of the estate, and obtaining court authorization for distribution of the estate to heirs and beneficiaries. We represent clients in estates that require probate of a last will and testament and in estates where there is no will under the Oklahoma laws of intestate succession.
Representation of clients by GableGotwals’ attorneys in this context includes assistance and advice with respect to distributions from employee benefit plans and individual retirement accounts, life insurance, annuities, and for property owned in joint tenancy with right of survivorship, making disclaimers of bequests or inherited property to save estate or gift tax or enhance individual or family estate plans.
Our attorneys have represented clients in probate litigation, including will contests, estate creditors’ disputes, and surviving spouses’ claims. They have also successfully resolved disputes with taxing authorities over proposed assessments of additional estate or gift tax related to the administration of an estate.
Trust Administration and Amendment
Our attorneys are experienced in:
- Modifying irrevocable trusts to deal with changes needed to adapt the trust to developing circumstances the settlor did not foresee,
- Obtaining court interpretation of trust instruments, securing court approval of amendments to irrevocable trusts,
- Representing trustees, and beneficiaries, in disputes over the terms of a trust or trustee administration of a trust
- The administration of trusts when the settlor dies,
- Litigating trust disputes, and
- Negotiating out-of-court settlements of family disputes.
These situations can include questions related to.
Guardianships
GableGotwals’ attorneys assist and represent clients in guardianship and conservatorship matters to obtain court authority and oversight for the management of finances and property of, and to provide appropriate care and supervision for an incapacitated person, a minor child or a disabled adult.
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