Practice Area

Estate Planning, Trusts & Probate

Kirk & Simas trust and estate attorneys use their long experience and creativity to protect family wealth for individuals and their businesses. The Firm’s attorneys are thoroughly familiar with the complex federal and state frameworks related to planning and administering estates and trusts, as well as the succession planning and exit strategy needs of closely held businesses. When necessary, the Firm’s estate attorneys team with the Firm’s litigators to resolve all manner of disputes that can arise in estate matters.

Estate Planning & Wealth Preservation

Estate planning is essential to preserve family wealth and provide for efficient and caring distribution of family assets. Firm attorneys help establish plans for clients that avoid probate delays and expense, address current and anticipated changes in complex tax rules, and temper complicated family dynamics, while addressing the family’s special circumstances.

Firm attorneys are also versed in formulating lifetime gifting programs and designing long-term planning vehicles such as irrevocable and other grantor trusts, and IRA LLC’s to protect real property, address complicated investor portfolios, and create financial security, all while minimizing taxes and providing a uniform distribution plan for the next generation.

Probate & Trust Administration

A practical and cost-effective approach to post-death estate and trust administration is as important as the underlying estate plan to ensuring proper and efficient transfer of family wealth. The Firm’s attorneys have extensive experience and knowledge in assisting clients with administration techniques and elections, including tax planning alternatives, statutory tax elections and disclaimers.

Firm attorneys provide step-by-step counsel to Trust grantors, executors, trustees and beneficiaries during all phases of an estate administration to ensure the proper gathering, liquidation, administration, appraisal, accounting and ultimate transfer of assets.

Business Succession Planning

Recognizing that most family and other closely held businesses do not survive the first transfer to the next generation, Kirk & Simas’ attorneys help clients establish plans that facilitate business continuity through multiple generations and maximize returns for the founders.

Developing a family business succession plan is a multi-phase and multi-discipline process that typically involves counsel from multiple independent professionals. Ideally, each contributes objectivity, specialized skills and experience to a coordinated plan. Firm attorneys have extensive experience collaborating with other professionals to analyze and structure general investment and business assets and agreements to efficiently provide for retirement and post-death transitions as well as other long term goals.

Accordingly, Kirk & Simas maintains close working relationships with the region’s most skilled financial planners and other investment advisors, accountants, and bankers to ensure clients reach their succession and retirement goals.

Conservatorships & Guardianships

When a child or adult is unable to oversee their own personal affairs or finances; whether due to loss of or removal from a parent in the case of a child, or due to increasing age, disability, injury, or any other cause with respect to an adult, it may become necessary to seek court appointment of a guardian or conservator for that person, even when an appropriate Power of Attorney or Health Care Directive is in place.

Kirk & Simas has substantial experience navigating California’s complex guardianship and conservatorship law for the families of children and other incapacitated persons.

Estate Litigation

Kirk & Simas’ trust and estates attorneys have a long track record of successfully teaming with the Firm’s litigators to resolve varied estate administration disputes in both court proceedings and using other informal means to save clients’ time, money, and emotional energy.

The Firm regularly represents estate plan creators and beneficiaries (including charitable non-profit organizations), corporate trustees (such as banks and trust companies), and private executors, trustees, administrators and other fiduciaries, in all facets of estate disputes.

Firm attorneys combine in-depth understanding of trust and estate law with decades of experience in litigation procedures and tactics, much of which is unique to trust and estate disputes. The goal is always to resolve the dispute in an equitable and efficient manner. Often that means that mediation and arbitration are used as alternative dispute techniques.

The end result is a more expert, more efficient and more creative advocacy in the wide range of contexts in which trust and estate disputes can arise. Those include: claims for breach of fiduciary duty or the duty of loyalty, claims arising out of assets sales, environmental claims, investment claims, beneficiary disputes (such as involving contested heirship, pretermitted and adopted heirs), disputed creditor claims, judicial construction and modification of wills and trusts, will and trust contests, will and trust validity, claims involving capacity, undue influence, elder abuse, contested powers of attorney, contested accountings, fraudulent transfers, partition actions, spousal right of election issues, wrongful death recovery, family and estate management disputes, and conservatorships and guardianships.

Contact: Estates@KirkSimas.com