Estate Planning

Byron T. Cooksey, Todd W. Fennell, Anthony P. Guettler, Troy B. Hafner, William N. Kirk, Christopher K. Pegg

The Estate Planning and Tax Group focuses on personal lifetime planning for individuals and their closely-held businesses.  The members of the Estate Planning and Tax Group provide comprehensive estate and tax planning services, including:

  • Will planning and drafting, including determination of appropriate probate-avoidance measures.
  • Establishment and administration of a broad range of trusts, including revocable living trusts, charitable trusts, educational trusts, trusts for children and multi-generational dynasty trusts.
  • Advance planning for incapacity, including living wills, designations of healthcare surrogates, and durable powers of attorney for financial matters.
  • Implementation of tax efficient family wealth transfer and asset protection planning techniques.
  • Charitable giving, including lifetime gifts, bequests, charitable lead and remainder trusts and private foundations.
  • Life insurance planning, including irrevocable life insurance trusts.
  • Retirement planning, including lifetime distribution planning and advice on elections and disposition at death to maximize income tax benefits of IRA's and other retirement accounts.
  • Counsel regarding closely-held businesses and their owners, including business entity selection, transition and succession planning, control, valuation and liquidity.
  • Establishment and maintenance of guardianships for minors and incompetent adults.
  • Estate and trust disputes and litigation.
  • Sophisticated tax planning within the lifetime construction of the estate plan and post-mortem estate and income tax planning.
  • Planning and counsel regarding Florida's unique homestead laws and their impact on the estate plan.
  • Florida residencey issues.
  • Intangible Tax Planning.

The Estate Planning and Tax Group is proud to assist its high net-worth clients with the implementation of a "Family Office" structure. The Family Office concept aims to provide clients having net worths exceeding $10,000,000.00 with comprehensive services and structured oversight of all elements of their financial lives and their estate plans. This concept places the family's team of advisors together in an organized and fruitful way so that matters regarding taxation, financial planning, investment strategies, budgeting and other personal family issues can be formulated and implemented with a complete view rather than through isolated decisions made in a vacuum. This helps avoid gaps and conflicting overlaps of attention, that otherwise result. The Family Office concept is a fast growing trend in the delivery of sophisticated estate planning and advisory services, but it is still offered by only a slight number of law firms nationwide.

Gould Cooksey Fennell understands that each client's situation is unique. By examining the client's objectives in light of current laws and foreseeable changes in the law, our estate planning and tax attorneys develop plans that are customized to our clients' wishes, while at the same time offering both immediate and long-term tax savings.

Although much of the focus is on estate planning and the related areas of taxation, the Estate Planning and Tax Group is also very involved in identifying other state and federal tax issues for both our individual clients and our corporate and business clients. The attorneys strive to structure our clients' transactions in such a way as to minimize taxation, both presently and in the future.

Many individuals spend the better portion of their lives building wealth to assure a comfortable and secure lifestyle for themselves and a legacy to pass on to their loved ones and/or their favorite charitable causes. The attorneys in the Estate Planning and Tax Group are pleased to play a meaningful role in assuring that the wishes of our clients are well met.

Gould Cooksey Fennell, P.A., Attorneys at Law, has offices in Vero Beach, Florida. The firm serves clients throughout the region including Brevard County, Indian River County, St. Lucie County, Martin County, Okeechobee County and Palm Beach County. This includes the following cities: Melbourne, Palm Bay, Fellsmere, Sebastian, Vero Beach, Ft. Pierce, Port St. Lucie, Okeechobee and West Palm Beach, Florida.