As estate planning attorneys, we have developed a unique, user-friendly process called The Family Vision Experience. We help you create and implement a vision to enrich and empower your family and to build a legacy for future generations…

Explanation of Concept The goal is to create a simple tracking tool to avoid losing sight of the big picture. Think horizontal timeline, with hash marks representing various points in time. At certain intervals which you select, you enter the date, draw a line up from the date, and enter a few notations about the…

In a hypothetical case, imagine that a married couple has a 25-year-old son living in Wisconsin. The son has a girlfriend and is in a stable relationship with her. Marriage is not on the immediate horizon. The girlfriend has career aspirations that could require significant investment. She also has significant student loans. From the perspective…

In 1976, the lifetime exemption from Federal estate taxes was $60,000. By 1987 the exemption was $600,000. By the time President George W. Bush had taken office, it was scheduled to increase to $1 million by 2006, but in the summer of 2001, Congress enacted scheduled increases in the exemption to $3,500,000 by 2009…

Many clients can handle their estate planning needs in economical fashion with a will. Wills (called “pour over wills”) are also used in conjunction with revocable trusts.

Increasingly we use revocable (living) trusts as the main engine of estate planning, and we always use them in the case of larger estates. We are experienced with their creation and their “funding,” and we work closely with the client´s other advisors to ensure effective coordination.

We never create a will or trust for a client without also considering other tools which we routinely use to help the clients maximize their control over their unique situation.

Here are some of the tools we most commonly use:

• Durable powers of attorney
• Health care powers of attorney
• Marital Property Agreements
• Disposition of Remains

• Multi-Trust Provisions
• Total Return Trusts
• Family Limited Partnerships
• Life Insurance Trusts
• Generation-Skipping Trusts
• Lifetime Gifts

• Charitable Remainder Trusts
• Designating the Right Asset to Pass to Charity at Your Death
• Family Foundations and Creating Funds within a Community Foundation

• Management Succession
• Ownership Succession

Transfer of property at death, even under a will, does not necessarily require a full probate. Often other, more summary court procedures allow us to help the client minimize the time and cost. In other cases, where clients have used revocable (living) trusts and followed our instructions, there is no probate, but what is still to be done (for example, closing out the trust and filing final tax returns) has to have a name, so we call it “post-death administration,” and if there is other on-going work (continuing trust, for instance) we call this work “trust administration.”