PERSONAL SERVICES/
ESTATE AND TAX PLANNING PRACTICE GROUP

Overview
Cummins & White, LLP recognizes our business clients are also individuals, and we routinely provide legal services for those individuals. Our Personal Services/Estate and Tax Planning Practice Group is structured to offer comprehensive, highly personalized legal services to the individual. From the purchase of homes, to the negotiation of contracts, to estate planning, our goal is to help clients accomplish their personal objective for asset protection and wealth creation. We know precisely when to utilize the firm’s expertise so that clients derive the maximum benefit from our services in a way that is efficient and cost-effective.

Personal Services
Cummins & White, LLP routinely assists individuals with their legal affairs, large and small. We frequently assist with matters relating to the purchase of a house or condominium, as well as negotiating construction contracts to renovate or build a residence. For individuals with significant real estate holdings, our lawyers have the ability to handle all aspects of commercial or residential real estate management, from project development, to lease negotiations, to building repairs.

Our lawyers are pleased to help clients with all types of contracts that need negotiating or review, from business agreements to employment contracts for executives and consultants. As insurance touches many aspects of every individual’s life, we are ideally poised to advise clients as to which types of coverage offers the best protection for their families and assets.

Estate and Tax Planning
Cummins & White’s Personal Services/Estate and Tax Planning Practice Group provides a full range of estate and business succession planning services to major institutions, closely held companies, and individual clients. Our services include a "global review" of each client’s overall estate, income and gift tax issues with a view toward practical and relevant solutions. We focus on wealth transfer, asset protection and business succession planning for the perpetuation of personal wealth for the client and to benefit that client’s heirs.

We keep abreast of the frequent changes in tax law on federal, state and international levels, as well as changes in probate, trust and related insurance law. We evaluate how these changes will impact our clients and advise them accordingly. In that respect, we also draw upon the firm’s other disciplines and coordinate with the client’s other advisors, including accounting, insurance, investment banking and trust professionals, to successfully deliver solutions that address their unique and special needs.

Cummins & White offers timely and creative advice regarding the transfer and future governance of clients’ assets and business concerns. We represent both United States citizens and foreign nationals who have investments or business interests throughout the world. We establish family revocable and irrevocable trusts, as well as charitable, educational and special needs trusts, among others. We address methods of value compression for estate tax purposes and integrate these methods with insurance and other sale and gifting techniques.

Overall estate planning usually begins with the creation of a revocable family trust, wills, and durable powers of attorney for health care and financial management. Depending upon the client’s need, we often establish other business entities and/or prepare insurance, charitable and other irrevocable trusts. Such irrevocable trusts may include creditor protected trusts and perpetual trusts created in the State of Alaska or other states that permit such types of trusts.

Our lawyers are adept at integrating estate planning techniques with asset protection, business succession and generation skipping tax planning. Such planning often includes assistance with setting up family foundations or directing assets contributed to a community foundation. When friends or relatives have failed to plan appropriately, we will also handle probate matters, conservatorships or guardianships.

Cummins & White provides retirement benefits planning and other related services to ensure a comfortable lifestyle for those contemplating or planning for retirement. Often in estate planning, family issues arise and our lawyers are quick to handle domestic matters that relate to estate planning, including preparation of prenuptial, postnuptial, separate property and community property agreements.

The firm handles after-death estate and trust administration. We represent executors, trustees, beneficiaries and other interested parties. Although we attempt to dispel any unnecessary family disputes, if one does occur, we assist fiduciaries and beneficiaries with mediation of any issues and, if necessary, will represent them with the litigation of probate, estate and trust matters.

A Final Word
We appreciate the confidence our clients place in us when it comes to handling personal issues, particularly asset and wealth management and their future transfer. We work closely with clients to provide them with practical, positive solutions to their perceived and anticipated needs. Our service is uniquely personal and we structure our planning advice to best preserve, protect and control wealth while living and to efficiently transfer assets either during life or upon death at a minimum tax cost.