Northern Virginia Estate Planning Attorney
Preserving and increasing wealth requires strategy, planning and artful execution. The estate planning attorneys in Virginia at Odin, Feldman & Pittleman collaborate with clients to structure their affairs in a way that helps them to maximize wealth and protect their assets for the future.
In addition to leveraging their extensive experience and legal knowledge to help clients preserve and transfer their wealth to future generations, our estate planning attorney apply their in-depth financial and business insights to tailor their advice and planning in Virginia. Indeed, most of the estate planning attorney groups are also CPAs or hold graduate degrees in taxation.
We work with owners of closely held businesses, corporate executives, professionals, and non-profit organizations to draft trusts and wills, establish charitable giving programs, and structure business entities to maximize income tax benefits and reduce estate and gift tax liabilities. We provide extensive advice on the use and administration of trusts, estates and investment vehicles, and methods to reduce the liability of fiduciaries.
We also represent fiduciaries in the administration of estates and trusts and litigate matters involving estates and trusts.
The Estate Planning attorney group in Virginia provides personalized legal services and advice regarding:
Areas of Concentration
Whether through sale, ownership transfer, retirement, or liquidation, our estate planning attorney can help you to manage and navigate successfully when it’s time to exit your business. Our goal is to help each business client build and implement a custom, business succession plan that meets each client’s unique individual goals and objectives in Virginia.
Our estate planning attorney can assist you in applying charitable planning techniques that deliver immediate and long-term tax benefits while directing vital financial resources to those who need it most. Whether through lifetime or testamentary donor advised funds (DAFs), private foundations, charitable remainder trusts (CRTs), charitable lead trusts (CLTs), private endowments, or scholarship funds, we help clients to select and implement the tools that best meet their charitable goals.
The proper business entity formation and operation can protect assets from creditors and yield significant tax savings for the business owners and their families in Virginia. It can also raise questions and scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service. Odin, Feldman & Pittleman’s estate planning attorney remain abreast of the latest IRS guidelines and rulemaking, and use creativity and experience to ensure we represent our clients effectively and responsibly.
Making financial gifts over the span of one’s lifetime can be a great tool in reducing estate taxes. Our estate planning attorney puts their financial knowledge and expertise to work for clients, helping them to preserve and transfer wealth while minimizing gift taxes over their lifetimes.
How you spend your latter years has everything to do with how well you prepare today. Our estate planning attorney in Virginia can help you plan for the unexpected by ensuring your wishes are clearly documented within your estate plan. Should you become incapacitated, your loved ones will have the tools and insights they need to make decisions on your behalf and in your best interests.
If you ever are unable to act in your own behalf, a durable power of attorney can provide clients with the assurance and confirmation that their affairs will be managed in accordance with their wishes.
Special needs planning is the legal specialty of ensuring a high level of care for loved ones who live with mental, emotional, or physical disabilities when you are no longer able to be the one providing it. We accomplish this by maximizing and preserving benefits and developing a care plan in conjunction with experts, such as care managers and financial advisors.
The maximization and preservation of benefits often involves intricate estate planning for the family members of the individual with special needs. Oftentimes, we utilize a special needs trust, a creature of federal and state law that allows a special needs individual to be a beneficiary of a trust over which he or she has no access or control, such that the trust cannot be counted as an asset against them for purposes of determining benefits eligibility.
It is one thing for a lawyer to say he or she “does” special needs; it’s an entirely different thing to “do” special needs. The attorneys at OFP have devoted the time, energy and commitment necessary to understanding the relevant local, state and federal benefits and their conjunction with the estate planning tools required to ensure your loved one’s comfort and safety even after you are no longer here to provide it.
Establishing a trust helps clients to protect their estate by managing tax liability, sheltering certain property and avoiding probate court. Let our estate planning attorney help you determine the best type of trust for your needs.
A will perhaps is the most basic of estate planning attorney tools. From drafting and memorializing your final wishes to helping you and your family avoid the pain of contentious challenges after your passing, the OF&P estate planning attorneys have the knowledge, experience and compassion to preserve your legacy and your family’s future well-being.
Representative Matters
- Represented family-owned business in keeping the family together after the founders’ divorce and building an effective estate plan to pass ownership to the next generation with minimal tax consequences.
- Represented trustees of various trusts to reform estate planning documents in order to minimize adverse estate and gift tax effects created by the founder’s pre-death planning efforts.
- Created complex estate planning structures utilizing limited liability companies and irrevocable trusts to transfer wealth to the next generation with minimal income and estate and gift tax consequences, while saving the families significant estate tax following the founders’ deaths.
- Built complex management succession plans for closely held businesses that did not want to be sold following the founders’ deaths, and integrated the plans into the estate planning documents of the founders.
- Structured the buy-out of inactive family members by active members in closely held businesses, where the active family members wanted control of the businesses, but the inactive family members wanted to be treated fairly and equitably.
