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Trusts & Estates
Estate plans preserve and distribute wealth during and beyond a donor’s lifetime. Like individuals, each one is unique.
People spend their lifetimes acquiring, growing and preserving assets. When the time comes to arrange for the safe and orderly transfer of one’s property, we place our trust in the lawyer we choose to solidly and effectively structure the estate plan according to our wishes. Burns & Levinson attorneys counsel many individuals with complex and demanding needs – not only high net worth individuals, but also those with blended families, special needs, heirloom real estate and occupations with a high risk for liability. In each and every case, our attorneys are the architects of estate plans and trusts that integrate particular and unique goals for disposition of wealth, minimization of taxes, and prudent management and control.
Burns & Levinson trusts and estates attorneys consistently use a strategic and multidisciplinary approach involving all aspects of tax, corporate, real estate, and family law, as well as probate, fiduciary and business litigation, that may intersect with an individual’s estate plan. No detail is unattended. The resulting arrangements seamlessly provide an orderly transition of preserved wealth.
We collaborate with our clients’ pre-existing financial advisors, such as long-time and trusted bankers, accountants and financial planners. As skilled as our lawyers are in understanding the bigger picture, we serve to coordinate, simplify and synergize the focused efforts of the financial advisory team, assuring that goals are realized as collaboratively and efficiently as possible.
There are three trusts and estates areas of service where our experience is worthy of special note:
• Burns & Levinson has settled and administered hundreds of decedents’ estates of all sizes and varieties in a careful and cost-effective manner. Our skilled staff of attorneys, paralegals and administrators deals with the countless details required in completing the probate and required tax filings and audits with compassionate attention to the survivors’ needs and concerns.
• Burns & Levinson has been a preeminent law firm for family and closely held businesses in New England since our firm was founded in 1960. Our strategic successes in planning and administering estates, trusts and other arrangements for clients and their families are legendary. We develop and refine creative strategies that address the demanding issues of management, succession and ownership transfer with minimum conflict and maximum benefit.
• We have earned an enviable reputation for astutely advising fiduciaries, both professional and nonprofessional, on the many legal and ethical complexities confronting those who hold property for beneficiaries. Whether the issue is liability, accounting to beneficiaries, or interpreting the provisions of governing documents, we understand the complexities that challenge executors, guardians, conservators, trustees and custodians as they deal with fiduciary responsibility and applicable law. Through our subsidiary, Fiduciary Real Estate Advisors LLC, we also assist these fiduciaries with the day-to-day management of real property in accordance with their responsibilities and the terms of the governing instrument.
