Estate Planning, Probate and Estate Settlement

When you’ve worked hard all your life to build a business and your net worth to create security for your loved ones, it’s important to know that the fruits of your labor will endure and pass into the hands you intend. That’s why estate planning is so critical. Proper estate planning achieves personal objectives (such as making sure the right people manage and benefit from one’s estate) and financial objectives (such as minimizing gift, estate, and generation-skipping taxes). In addition, proper planning avoids the time delays and costs associated with probate court administration during periods of disability or after a death.

We offer our clients a full range of estate planning services, including those needed to ensure that your net worth and ownership and management of a closely-held or family business pass as intended. Lillig & Thorsness’ unique customized “blueprint” gives every client a visual summary of our recommended estate planning strategies. This allows clients to review and approve their plans before our attorneys draft the complex documents needed to put the recommended strategies in place.

Among the many estate planning tools we offer our clients are wills, revocable living trusts, durable powers of attorney and advance medical directives. We also offer more sophisticated planning strategies such as:

• Marital deduction trusts
• Qualified terminable interest (QTIP) trusts
• Qualified domestic trusts
• Applicable exclusion trusts
• Credit shelter trusts
• Family bypass trusts
• Irrevocable life insurance trusts
• "Crummey" trusts
• Gift trusts for minors
• Qualified personal residence trusts
• Generation-skipping and "Dynasty" trusts
• Grantor retained annuity trusts
• Charitable remainder trusts
• Charitable lead trusts
• Family limited partnerships
• Buy-sell agreements for business owners
• Special needs trusts

In addition to creating estate plans, we provide services to guardians and trustees of the estates and trusts of minors and disabled clients, and to executors, administrators and trustees of decedents' estates and trusts. These services include the preparation and filing of inventories, accountings and estate and inheritance tax returns and the administration of estate and trust assets.

The time to create an estate plan is before you need an estate plan. Contact Lillig & Thorsness today to discuss how we can help to protect everything you’ve worked for.

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If you've scheduled an initial consultation with us, please download and complete the Personal Information Questionnaire linked here. Simply click on the link and save the .pdf file to a location on your computer. Then you can open the document, print it, and fill it out. Don't forget to bring your completed questionnaire with you to your consultation. We look forward to meeting with you. See you there!