Overview

Dilworth Paxson’s Trusts & Estates lawyers advise clients regarding:

  • Income, gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer tax planning
  • Complex estate administration
  • Lifetime gifting and charitable giving
  • Structuring ownership and preservation of family-owned property and business interests
  • Creating and operating charitable foundations and non-profits
  • Designing and coordinating multi-jurisdictional estate plans
  • Problems associated with the very young, the disabled, the incapacitated and the aging

Our Trust & Estates Group has substantial experience in:

  • Estate administration process (including probate)
  • Estate and trust litigation
  • Orphans’ court matters
  • Preparation of revocable (living) and irrevocable trusts
  • Special needs trusts
  • Trusts for minors
  • Modifications of irrevocable trusts
  • Trust Situs issues
  • Wills
  • Educational funding
  • Retirement planning
  • Premarital and post-marital property agreements
  • Durable powers of attorney for health care decisions and for financial decisions
  • Custodianships
  • Guardianships

We regularly administer estates and trusts for our clients, including a full range of estate administration, tax preparation, and fiduciary accounting services for individuals acting as fiduciaries. Our group provides complete postmortem tax planning, including the preparation of all federal and state death tax returns, audit and tax negotiation and litigation proceedings. In addition, the Trusts & Estates Group has an active estate litigation practice. Our experience extends to virtually every aspect of probate and trust-related litigation representing estate and trust beneficiaries as well as individual and corporate fiduciaries.

Litigation handled by the Trusts & Estates lawyers includes:

  • Will contests
  • Undue influence proceedings
  • Breach of fiduciary duty actions
  • Surcharge actions
  • Will and trust construction proceedings
  • Guardianship proceedings for minors and incapacitated persons
  • Wrongful death and survival action claims
  • Liability claims
  • Estate administration disputes

Our lawyers counsel executors, trustees, and guardians concerning estate and trust administration, fiduciaries with property in several jurisdictions and countries, and trustees and directors of charitable organizations.

Representative Matters

  • Dilworth Paxson’s Trust & Estates practice group recently completed the representation of one of the largest estates in Pennsylvania history and we are currently representing another large estate of a person of national prominence. We prepared the estate plans for the foregoing individuals in these major estates. We also serve as general counsel to one of the largest charitable private foundations in the country and general counsel to one of the largest private operating foundations in the country.

Representative Matters

  • Dilworth Paxson’s Trust & Estates practice group recently completed the representation of one of the largest estates in Pennsylvania history and we are currently representing another large estate of a person of national prominence. We prepared the estate plans for the foregoing individuals in these major estates. We also serve as general counsel to one of the largest charitable private foundations in the country and general counsel to one of the largest private operating foundations in the country.