Estate Planning

Planning for the future and ensuring that your wishes will be carried out doesn’t have to keep you up at night. Work with us for your estate planning needs to be sure your assets are invested appropriately, that you have provided for your heirs, and that your wealth will be transferred in a seamless, tax-efficient manner.

Understanding your challenges

For more than a century, we have worked with individuals, families, and business owners to translate their success into a meaningful and lasting legacy. We understand the issues you face, and we can help you address them in a thorough and disciplined way.
Our estate planning strategies help you:

• Pass your legacy on to your heirs
• Grow your assets
• Minimize inheritance taxes, include estate taxes and gift taxes
• Protect your assets from creditors

The non-tax side of planning

• There are a number of “non-tax” reasons for estate planning that relate to protecting existing wealth and planning the transfer of wealth through generations, including:
• Creating vehicles that provide confidentiality and privacy
• Creating mechanisms for the efficient funding of charitable causes
• Ensuring the proper care of minors or disabled family members
• Providing for financial security during times of incapacity
• Handling or avoiding probate in multiple states
• Encouraging responsible behavior by future generations when they receive an inheritance

Through our collaborative approach to estate planning, we are happy to work collectively with your estate planning attorney and other advisors to provide the most comprehensive and seamless service.

Philanthropic Planning
Making a difference to the causes that are important to you and your family is a significant part of your overall plan. Let us guide you on the philanthropic strategies that are designed to help benefit your favorite charity, your family, and your tax planning.

• Save taxes while promoting family values

Developing a philanthropic plan helps to promote family values and social responsibility while leveraging the tax-deductible nature of charitable gifts. Our team offers guidance on the different benefits of a variety of strategies, including:

• Charitable trusts
• Outright gifts of appreciated securities
• Private/family foundations
• Once the right strategy for your particular needs and goals is implemented, we can provide trustee, administrative, and investment management services for all types of charitable trusts and foundations.
• Select the right assets to gift
• Deciding what to give is just as important as determining how to give. We can advise on whether gifting cash, securities, real estate, art, and other valuable collections is right for your unique situation.

Business Owners

Leading a successful enterprise takes the majority of your time and dedication. You need the right team in place to not only manage your entire financial situation, but to anticipate times of transition. Founded by a family business leader more than a century ago, Pheterson Spatorico, LLP has the experience to help guide you through times of growth and succession.

• Providing transition advice before key events occur

Our relationship-based approach to serving your capital needs addresses the key areas of transition throughout the lifecycle of your business.

Business capital
Learn how our wealth management advice can help you prepare for the future while you’re running your business today.

Personal capital
Let us help you execute your exit strategy from the business, while ensuring that your personal finances are aligned to support your lifestyle during retirement and to provide for your heirs in the future.

Legacy capital
Explore longer-term legacy planning strategies to provide for your grandchildren and other heirs and support your charitable causes.

Trustee Services

When it comes to selecting a trustee, it’s important to find a partner with longevity, prudence, and considerable experience working with families over multiple generations. Discover why the attorneys at Pheterson Spatorico, LLP are recognized as a leader in exercising fiduciary oversight on complex family situations.

Heritage of fiduciary responsibility

We are accustomed to managing generations of family wealth, ensuring that each trust is administered in strict accordance with its specific provisions and that the trust’s terms are carried out as its creator intended. When making discretionary decisions, we demonstrate impartiality, fairness, and sensitivity to the needs of the beneficiaries we serve.

Duties to beneficiaries:

• Impartiality, integrity, fairness, and sensitivity to the beneficiary’s needs
• Establish open channels of communication
• Distribute income and principal on a timely basis
• Exercise discretion appropriately and professionally

Legal obligations

• Assume legal responsibility for properly carrying out the terms of the trust
• Seek specialized legal, tax, and accounting advice when needed for complex matters

Understanding the needs of beneficiaries

Through our culture of building long-term relationships with our clients, our fiduciary advisors and relationship managers get to know you and your personal needs and situations. We are always listening to your needs and have a keen understanding of the many unique opportunities and challenges trust beneficiaries may face.

Personal Trust Administration

When creating a trust, you want to ensure that it will be administered with efficiency and diligence. Experience how generations of families have benefitted from our considerable trust management skill.

A high caliber of personal trust administration

Pheterson Spatorico, LLP provides a variety of services designed to help ensure that your trust is efficiently administered to help grow, protect, and preserve wealth for future generations.