Irell & Manella LLP works closely with its local, national, and international estate planning clients to help them identify their personal objectives to create a strategy for asset distribution and to minimize the tax cost of meeting their families’ objectives.  The firm then provides the technical assistance to preserve the assets and execute the plans according to the clients’ wishes.

The work of the personal planning group is based upon long-term, personal relationships with a client and may cross over into many areas of a client’s public and private life.  Our attorneys place special emphasis on the “human” side of the process, paying particular attention to the importance of the family and the individual personalities involved in all aspects of each matter.

Irell & Manella’s personal planning practice group specializes in the formation of trusts and college funds, insurance planning, the preparation of prenuptial agreements, planning for charitable giving, the formulation and maintenance of living trusts and wills, the formulation and implementation of employee benefit plans, and other sophisticated mechanisms designed to pass wealth from one generation to the next as smoothly and effectively as possible.

The firm also practices in more traditional fields, such as testamentary and post-mortem planning and estate administration, at a highly sophisticated level.

Irell & Manella’s services often involve business planning for family-owned companies to help ensure that these companies will be passed on to the next generation in sound condition and with minimum tax liabilities.  In individual instances, this may require such actions as formation of family partnerships, planning of gifts, and establishment of trusts or capital investment by heirs.  The firm is also experienced in probate litigation, including matters involving some of the largest family trusts in the United States.

Irell & Manella partners are members of the International Academy of Estate & Trust Law, the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, and the ABA Sections on Taxation & Real Property Probate & Trust Law, and are frequent authors and lecturers on estate planning, trust, probate, and related areas of the law, including books on revocable and irrevocable trusts. Irell & Manella partners have been recognized throughout the country for their achievements in estate planning.

For more information, please contact Paul Frimmer.