Estate Planning Services
“The joy of security is certainly the most comforting that the mind of man can ever feel”
As a member of the National Network of Estate Planning Attorneys, The Law Offices of Thomas D. Glascock offer an ongoing maintenance and education program for our clients. To be successful, all planning should begin with education. The goal is to cultivate a long-term plan and establish a lifelong process to maintain and accomplish it through to the moment of transition. We seek to work with our clients to achieve long-term planning through each phase of life, including the individual’s life and the life of their business. Because circumstances are not static but instead do change, we seek to create a firm foundation which can be updated to remain current and from which the client can plan any transition. With continued maintenance, we seek to make certain that our clients’ planning fits their changing circumstances and provides protection at all times for their families and businesses.
Moreover, elemental to successful planning is our recognition that each client is unique, with unique needs and experiences. It is, therefore, critical for success that the client is included in each element of planning. Their successful plan will require a team to accomplish the client’s goals, with the client, attorney, financial planner, insurance advisor, accountant, and family members each serving an important role.
With the client’s team, we will work together to form a comprehensive strategy and to build relationships that ensure your planning needs (whether estate- or business-related) are successfully addressed, whether by reviewing retirement goals, overall financial status, investment strategy, insurance coverage, and disability planning. For our business clients, this will include start-up planning (what type of entity is best for you), growth and control planning (including, by negotiating and drafting various types of business agreements), continuation planning, disability planning, asset protection planning, succession planning, and exit planning. That said, all planning (whether for the business or estate client) should begin with the end in mind.
ESTATE PLANNING
WE provide estate planning services for people from every walk of life, designed to achieve both present and future goals.
Our clients are like family, and their wellbeing is most important. With that in mind, we emphasize that the means used to produce documents can be as important as the documents themselves. As such, we seek to create an effective estate plan through personalized counseling, proper asset ownership, a formal review process, and a controlled transfer process addressing what to do, how to do it, and how to pay for it.
Through agreed fees, we focus on client education and counseling, long-range planning, co-creation working with clients and planning partners, and ongoing maintenance to consistently identify and realize client goals. More specifically, we use a three step strategy:
- Developing your plan with you and your other professionals.
- Commitment to a formal continuing maintenance and education program.
- Providing appropriate assistance for you and your family to transfer your wisdom along with your wealth.
When client needs call for it, we will utilize sophisticated planning techniques. This can be family business succession planning, wealth preservation planning, asset preservation counseling, corporate and partnership business structuring, partnership and estate freezing techniques, and income tax planning for closely-held businesses and real estate clients. Moreover, we provide estate and trust administration services, including the representation of estate beneficiaries, the handling of estate and trust accounting proceedings, the preparation of federal and state estate tax returns and fiduciary income tax returns, and the handling of various other estate matters.
Ownership Transfer and Exit Planning
Robert Avery of Cornell University states that “the majority of boomer wealth [in the United States today] is held in 12 million privately-owned businesses, of which more than 70% are expected to change hands in the next 10 to 15 years.” However, only about one-third of businesses survive to a second generation, and less than ten percent make it to a third generation. A LIMRA International Study states that, on average, only about fifty percent of businesses in the United States have a business continuation plan. This contributes to causing what attorney and author James E. Hughes, Jr. calls the “shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations” phenomenon.
We provide estate planning for the principals of family-owned or other closely-held businesses, assisting with the realization of your business continuation planning objectives through the development of personalized business succession and wealth transfer plans—whether they be preservation of the business, maximizing business value, minimizing transfer taxes, and/or facilitating ownership and/or management transition. In so doing, we form family limited partnerships and limited liability companies, draft shareholder agreements and operating agreements with buy-sell and related tax provisions, assist with life insurance planning, use sophisticated techniques to minimize estate taxes, income taxes, and administrative costs, and help design and assist clients through the transfer process. Depending on what’s best for your business, the transfer can be done via a gifting program, sale to a grantor trust, a private equity group recapitalization, an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), a management buyout, or an outright sale of the business.
As with our traditional estate planning services, we focus on client education and counseling, long-range planning, the co-creation of plans working with clients and planning partners, and ongoing maintenance to consistently identify and realize client goals. More specifically, we use the same three-step strategy as outlined in the Estate Planning section above.
Through proper planning, we can protect against an unforeseen disability and assist you in realizing value from the businesses you have worked so hard to build. Your plan can help you achieve a secure retirement while realizing a smooth transition for your businesses, customers, family, key employees, and other successors.
Business Counselling and Business Transactions
OUR focus is to help clients identify and achieve their personal and business objectives. Firm business clients range from start-ups to emerging growth to mature businesses. Whether it be helping entrepreneurs like you solve the legal, business, tax, and cash flow issues that confront you daily or working with established business owners seeking to plan an eventual exit strategy, we advise on business matters and provide counsel about legal affairs.
We, therefore, provide strategic counseling on a variety of issues, including choice of entity and organizational issues, risk management, and asset protection planning. For operating companies, we provide strategic planning and day-to-day legal and business advice and contract review. Moreover, we advise companies on a broad range of business transactions, including (i) negotiating and drafting all forms of business agreements (including supplier, distribution, shareholder, employment, consulting, confidentiality, website development, and license agreements), (ii) corporate and tax planning, (iii) corporate recapitalizations, corporate distributions, stock redemptions, mergers, business sales, and acquisitions, (iv) joint ventures, (v) risk management and asset protection, and (vi) business succession and dissolutions.
Additionally, we advise not-for-profit organizations (including private foundations) on their formation and attainment of tax-exempt status, and counsel to these organizations on operational issues.
We also represent clients in all facets of commercial real estate transactions, including purchase and sale agreements, financing transactions, industrial/economic development projects, and commercial lease agreements in the office, retail, and industrial markets.
