Estate Planning (Wills, Trusts & Advanced Directives)

At the heart of American culture is the nuclear family, and every individual has a natural desire to protect their family and ensure that they are cared for. This protection often includes providing financial stability—both for your current family and for generations down the line. Certainly, no one can predict the future, so at FRB, we encourage you to implement a forward-looking strategy and to create contingency plans for your descendants.

At FRB, we can assist you in drafting your estate plan—regardless of whether you are a newlywed, the wealthy matriarch or patriarch of a multigenerational family, or anything in between. Our basic estate plan package includes a Last Will and Testament, in which you can specify how your property should be distributed among your loved ones at your death, as well as a set of advanced directive documents. The advanced directives include a Health Care Proxy and HIPAA Release, a Durable Power of Attorney, and an Appointment of Agent to Control Disposition of Remains. The Health Care Proxy and Power of Attorney allow you to appoint agents to make decisions (medical and financial, respectively) on your behalf in the event you are unable to make the decisions yourself, while the Appointment of Agent to Control Disposition of Remains permits you to specify your desired method of disposition for your body after you pass away and to appoint an agent to carry out your wishes.

However, we also understand that every family situation is different, and so we can customize your estate plan to appropriately fit your needs. In many circumstances, appropriate customization requires the drafting of a trust—whether that be for asset protection purposes or for providing for minor children or other beneficiaries that cannot manage their own assets. We pride ourselves on our ability to draft a wide range of trusts, but most notably, we frequently assist high-wealth clients in establishing asset protection plans. Our work for these clients tends to overlap with our other departments, as we employ corporate and real estate techniques to achieve the intended outcome. Our collective experience in these areas of law allows us to set up the legal structures necessary to achieve optimal asset protection from exorbitant taxes and unwarranted claims from creditors.

How Can FRB Help?

We understand that estate planning is often fraught with difficult and emotional decisions. Accordingly, we approach every matter not with only empathy and compassion, but also with an enthusiasm for problem-solving and strategy. Furthermore, our analysis of sensitive situations from an interdisciplinary perspective can often make the difference between a merely adequate answer and a great one. Hiring FRB to assist you as your estate planning attorneys will ensure that your vision for the future can come to fruition with ease.