Private Client Services
Securing legacies with thoughtful, informed planning.
Plans for the disposition of an individual’s assets are governed by increasingly complex laws. Careful financial and estate planning can ensure that wishes and directives are fulfilled.
Clients seek our counsel on a range of trust and estate planning services, including:
- Preparation of wills, trusts, powers of attorney, healthcare, and other documents.
- Development and implementation of complex gift and estate tax planning strategies.
- Probate and trust administration.
- Family office services.
- Preparation of estate and gift tax returns and audit representation.
- Counsel related to tax-exempt organizations, public charities, donor-advised funds, private foundations, and charitable trusts.
- Advice on fiduciary duties of trustee, executors, officers and directors, and liability avoidance.
- Guidance on business succession and tax planning, including shareholder agreements, operating agreements, voting trusts, creation of corporations, LLCs, and partnerships.
How we help clients
- Estate Planning
- Planning for Entrepreneurs and Executives
- Family Office Services
- Tax Controversy and Fiduciary Litigation
- International Trust & Estate Services
- Charitable Planning & Exempt Organizations
- Fiduciary & Investment Services
- Corporate Transparency Act
- Federal Tax
Private Client Services Services
Our Team
We provide an extensive range of estate planning services, guiding individuals, entrepreneurs, and executives toward effective wealth transfer, tax-minimization, and charitable strategies.
Estate Planning
We work with individuals on their estate plans, helping them define and meet their objectives. These projects can encompass a range of objectives, including allocation to beneficiaries, tax considerations, charitable planning, and navigation of family goals to achieve the desired result.
Planning for Entrepreneurs & Executives
We provide estate planning for owners of closely held businesses, senior officers of public companies, and entrepreneurs, helping them manage financial resources through the strategic use of trusts, gifts, sales, and other income- and wealth-transfer devices. These devices implement family and philanthropic goals while minimizing income, gift, and estate taxes. The probate or trust administration of our clients’ estates, which includes preparing necessary tax returns, facilitates the implementation of their lifetime planning to the succeeding generation of beneficiaries.
Family Office Services
We have a long history of representing family offices and quasi-family office arrangements, both domestically and overseas. We counsel individuals and families who wish to establish and administer family offices or other similar structures. As part of our counsel, we regularly help clients analyze succession issues, navigate securities laws, and solve complicated legal challenges in accordance with their personal goals. To that end, we collaborate with family members and family office advisors to support their efforts across multiple disciplines.
Tax Controversy & Fiduciary Litigation
Should disputes or conflicts arise, our national litigation practice represents financial institutions, individual trustees, personal representatives, and individual beneficiaries in a breadth of matters.
International Trust & Estate Services
Over the past several decades, we have helped hundreds of families navigate the succession, inheritance, and tax laws in the United States and many other jurisdictions, most notably in Asia, Canada, and Europe. We regularly work with advisors in foreign countries to advise U.S. citizens living abroad, U.S. citizens with nonresident beneficiaries or foreign assets, as well as foreign nationals with U.S. beneficiaries or U.S. assets, on their wealth transfer and tax structuring matters. We address the unique aspects of cross-border planning to ensure that the acquisition, retention, and disposition of assets fulfill our clients’ succession objectives in a tax-efficient manner.
Charitable Planning and Exempt Organizations
We also help our clients plan and execute their philanthropic and charitable projects, including private foundations, charitable trusts, donor-advised funds, planned giving, and alternative philanthropic structures.
Fiduciary & Investment Services; Perkins Coie Trust Company
Our team provides executor and trustee services through Perkins Coie Trust Company. As one of the few firms in the country to offer in-house fiduciary and investment services, we help many clients with their legal, estate planning and administration, trust, and investment management needs. Perkins Coie Trust Company LLC, chartered in the state of Washington, is a wholly owned affiliate of Perkins Coie LLP. Working in concert with the firm’s lawyers, the professionals at Perkins Coie Trust Company help our clients navigate changing tax laws, volatile financial markets, and increasingly complex investment options to ensure the long-time financial security of the clients, their families, and their beneficiaries.
Estate Organizer
Perkins Coie Trust Company LLC
Insights
News
Professional Experience
Estate Planning
Estate Planning Documents in the Context of Family Dynamics
Assisting clients in the preparation of their wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and healthcare documents, with attention to internal family dynamics and the family members' abilities to make and understand fiduciary and business decisions. This process often includes considering whether nonfamily executors and trustees may benefit the estate or trust administration. These documents include: revocable living trusts for lifetime management of assets or out-of-state real property to avoid probate, as well as durable powers of attorney for financial and healthcare decisions, durable powers of attorney (DPA), healthcare directives and living wills, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) authorizations for release of protected healthcare information, and premarital and postnuptial property status agreements that clarify status of community and separate property.
Estate Planning and Investing
Advised client on the use of family partnerships and limited liability companies to hold vested nonstatutory stock options in Fortune 500 companies for estate planning, investment, and management purposes.
Gift Planning
Providing advice on tax-efficient gifting to children and grandchildren, including drafting and implementing "Crummey" Trusts, generation-skipping trusts, residence trusts (QPRTs), grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs) and irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs). We also assisted clients with education savings planning, including tax effects of 529 plans, and provided advice on tax-efficient giving to charities, including charitable lead trusts and charitable remainder trusts (CLATs, CLUTs, CRATs, and CRUTs). In addition, we prepared estate and gift tax forecasts and plans for payment of estate taxes for business succession.
Multigenerational Estate and Asset Planning
Advising clients on multigenerational estate and asset planning for families owning large operating businesses.
Estate Distribution
Advised on post-mortem establishment of a timber management company to facilitate estate distribution and qualification for deferral of estate tax payments.
Guardianship and Special Needs Trust
Represent trustees of special needs trusts and guardians of loved ones in the preparation of periodic court reporting obligations. We also work with individuals seeking to become guardians of loved ones who have lost the capacity to manage their affairs.
Trust and Estate Mediation
Representing clients in the negotiation of mediated agreements covering a wide variety of trust and estate disputes.
Probate and Trust Administration
Advising clients on estate and trust administration, probate, estate and trust dispute resolution matters, and the preparation of gift and estate tax returns.
Maintaining the Privacy of Recognizable Individuals
Working with well-known clients and families to develop and implement a variety of strategies, including title-holding and fictitious name trusts, to enable them to buy, sell, and hold real estate and other assets without the risk of being identified and located through searchable public records.
Administering Large Global Estate
Advising in a matter involving a client who died leaving a large estate for us to administer for the benefit of family members as well as charities around the world. Although the estate is entitled to marital and charitable deductions, a majority of the estate is subject to federal estate taxes. Given the uncertainty in the stock market, we have worked closely with the executor and trustee to liquidate and preserve the assets in order to fund the specific bequests and tax obligations. The estate owns a residence and extensive real estate on a remote island. Maintaining and marketing the properties has presented various legal challenges given its uniqueness and the current real estate market. The decedent also had ownership interests in entities, which required special attention due to varying interests of the other owners and beneficiaries. We continue to address complex legal issues as we work with international beneficiaries to unwind entities, satisfy tax liabilities, liquidate and preserve the assets of the estate.
Family Office Services
Tax and Estate Planning for Family Office
Provide ongoing consultation with an active, multifunctional family office on a wide range of tax, estate planning, and administrative matters.
Limited Liability Companies and Family Limited Partnerships
Established limited liability companies (LLCs) and family limited partnerships (FLPs) for the management of family real estate and other assets among multiple generations of the same family.
Tax Controversy & Fiduciary Litigation
Estate Tax Evaluation Disputes
Provided counseling and managed the favorable resolution of the estate tax liability in a complex estate involving multiple lawyers, experts, and a corporation with international subsidiaries. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) obtained its own independent valuation of the corporation. The resolution involved extensive negotiations with the IRS and critical analysis of the experts' valuations.
Gift Tax Representation
Preparing gift tax returns to report taxable gifts and federal and Washington estate tax returns and represented taxpayers on estate and gift tax audits.
IRS Private Letter Ruling
Determined that changes to articles of incorporation did not affect grandfathered status of buy-sell provisions contained in the articles of incorporation for federal gift tax and generation-skipping tax purposes.
IRS Private Letter Ruling
Formed a trust by state, which authorized that a binding agreement does not result in a gift under IRS Code 2511.
IRS Private Letter Ruling
Advised on a technical advice memorandum on transfers of limited partnership units to family members as gifts eligible for annual gift tax exclusion.
IRS Private Letter Ruling
Obtained approval on structure of complex grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs) with revocable spousal annuities.
IRS Private Letter Rulings Regarding Generation-Skipping Tax
Obtained favorable private letter rulings from the IRS regarding the generation-skipping tax exemption.
IRS Private Letter Ruling
Determined that changes to articles of incorporation did not affect the grandfathered status of buy-sell provisions contained in the articles of incorporation for federal gift tax and generation-skipping tax purposes.
International Trust & Estate Services
International Tax Planning
Working with many clients on international tax planning, including a Belgian client currently living in Mexico with tax issues associated with his work in the United States.
Charitable Planning & Exempt Organizations
Establish Charitable Remainder Trusts
Advised clients on and implemented structured charitable remainder trusts to achieve asset diversification for clients with low-basis marketable securities.
Counsel to Nonprofit Organizations
Assist individuals and groups in the formation of charitable organizations and advise existing charitable organizations on a variety of legal and tax matters.
Form Private Foundations and Charitable Trusts
Assisted clients in establishing private foundations or charitable trusts to hold family assets. These include endowment agreements with various educational or charitable institutions. We also provided ongoing family foundation counseling and grant-making consultation and advice.
Creation of Private Foundations
Created private foundations to hold family assets, including family foundation counseling and grant-making consultation and advice.