Services

Sophisticated Estate Planning and Tax Advice

The attorneys at M&K provide sophisticated estate planning and tax advice to our clients.  We work closely with a client’s other trusted advisors to coordinate the estate plan with the client’s financial and business goals.  In addition to our law degrees, our partners have advanced degrees in business and taxation that give them unique perspective in the planning process.  New Hampshire has some of the most modern and flexible trust laws in the country, and our attorneys have participated intensively in the process of drafting and advocating for these new laws.  New Hampshire imposes no tax of any kind on New Hampshire trusts.  Our innovative trust laws, combined with our very favorable tax environment, allow us to craft highly personalized, tax efficient plans for our clients.  Some of the services we provide in connection with this planning include:

Minimizing clients’ estate tax exposure

by structuring transfers (gifts, sales or a combination) of assets from clients to perpetual, generation-skipping “dynasty” trusts.  This planning may include the use of entities, such as family limited partnerships or limited liability companies.  It also can virtually eliminate transfer taxes for future generations, and protect the transferred assets from other external forces, such as the beneficiaries’ creditors and dissident spouses.

Helping clients achieve their asset protection objectives

through the creation of asset protection trusts.  Our attorneys were instrumental in the drafting and passage of New Hampshire’s asset protection trust statute in 2008.  This law allows clients to establish trusts for their own benefit, and protect the assets transferred to the trusts from the clients’ creditors.  New Hampshire is one of just a handful of states that allows these types of trusts, and our asset protection trust statute is regarded as one of the best in the nation.

Helping clients achieve their philanthropic goals

through the creation and administration of private foundations, donor advised funds, charitable remainder unitrusts and other creative planned giving vehicles designed to support a family’s favored charities in perpetuity and facilitate family cohesion and the development of values such as financial and social responsibility in future generations.

Designing and implementing “family land preservation trusts”,

a unique multi-generational system for the transfer tax and creditor-safe use, protection, management and centralization of ownership and control of family recreational compounds and other “heirloom” real estate.

Crafting unique solutions to the business succession goals

of clients involved in multi-generational businesses.  Our experience includes succession planning for automobile dealerships, insurance companies, grocery stores, petroleum suppliers, beauty supply distributors, electrical contractors, manufacturers of medical and other specialty instrumentation, real estate development and management companies.  Often, these structures involve careful planning to centralize management in the hands of active family members, provide liquidity to pay taxes, and reconcile the interests of active descendants and those who are not participating in the business.

Handling the audit of complex federal estate and gift tax returns

at the examination and appellate levels.  Sophisticated estate planning often involves gifting that requires the use of a client’s lifetime gift tax exemption.  We prepare the gift tax returns reporting these gifts, and the estate tax return upon a client’s death.  In the unlikely event that a return is examined, we represent the client or the estate in the audit.  Our long experience in this area is reflected in the favorable results we consistently achieve.