What You Build Should Outlast You.
Estate planning asks people to think about things they would rather not, which is why it gets postponed. The cost of postponing it is never paid by the person who postponed — it falls to a family, at the worst possible moment, in a form that is far more expensive to fix than it would have been to prevent.
We handle the planning and the aftermath: the structures that pass wealth cleanly to the next generation, and the administration and disputes that follow when someone's affairs were left unsettled.
What We Do
- Wills and testamentary trusts
- Living trusts and revocable structures
- Powers of attorney and advance healthcare directives
- Succession planning for family and owner-managed businesses
- Estate, inheritance, and gift tax planning
- Cross-border estates and clients with assets in more than one country
- Probate and estate administration
- Trust administration and counsel to trustees
- Contested estates, will challenges, and trustee disputes
- Charitable giving, foundations, and philanthropic structures
- Guardianship arrangements for minor children
- Asset protection and pre-marital planning
Who We Serve
Individuals and families planning ahead; business owners whose company is the largest asset they will pass on; executors and trustees carrying legal duties they did not ask for; beneficiaries who believe an estate has been mishandled; and clients whose property, residence, or heirs sit in more than one jurisdiction.
How We Work
Two things distinguish estate work done properly. The first is asking the questions people avoid — what happens if the business has no buyer, if an heir is unable to manage an inheritance, if a marriage ends. A plan that only survives the expected scenario is not a plan.
The second is jurisdiction. Assets in the United States and the United Kingdom do not pass under one set of rules, and a document drafted well for one country can misfire badly in the other. With attorneys in Chicago and London, we structure estates that hold up on both sides rather than sending clients to two firms who never speak to each other.
We draft in plain language wherever the law permits it, because a document your family cannot read is a document your family will argue about.