Corporate and Transactional
WilmerHale’s private client team provides high net worth individuals with critical tax and legal advice on their estate planning, investments, business activities and charitable endeavors. International and domestic entrepreneurs, public company executives, investors and philanthropists turn to us for strategic guidance that optimizes the tax-efficient transfer of assets across multiple generations. We draw on the spectrum of resources offered by our nationally and internationally renowned full-service law firm—including our flagship corporate, securities and litigation practices—to meet our clients’ wealth and estate planning needs.
Significant financial assets—whether passed through many generations or achieved through a single business transaction—are almost always accompanied by complex legal issues and relationships. Careful management of these concerns can help to maximize the value of your wealth, not only for you and your immediate family, but also for future generations, philanthropic institutions and other people and organizations that matter most to you.
We serve as an objective, central source of knowledge and guidance as you make some of life’s most important decisions. Our lawyers help you achieve your trust and estate planning goals by designing and implementing structures for the effective transfer of wealth to future generations; directing the disposition of assets at death; minimizing income, estate, gift and generation-skipping taxes; protecting assets from the claims of creditors; and devising tax-efficient strategies for the donation of philanthropic gifts. We work closely with your other advisors, helping to preserve the wealth you have worked hard to create.
We cultivate dynamic, ongoing relationships with our private clients and their families and translate our knowledge of current legal developments into proactive strategies that address their individual planning challenges.
Our private client lawyers' experience includes:
- Preparing comprehensive estate plans for the transfer of assets during lifetime and at death
- Implementing plans to transfer pre-IPO and other stock to younger generations free of gift tax
- Effecting tax-efficient diversification of concentrated stock holdings
- Advising US residents and foreign nationals regarding offshore trusts
- Creating family LLCs to consolidate family assets and minimize taxes
- Integrating venture capital and private equity investments in planning documents
- Acting as professional trustee for family trusts spanning multiple generations
- Representing fiduciaries in trust and estate administration matters