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Estate Planning
Crowley Fleck PLLP
Billings, Montana, 59101
Crowley Fleck's Trust & Estates lawyers work hard to make complex transitions easier for individuals, families, businesses, and donors. We help clients prepare for life changes by developing and implementing retirement, estate, and long-term care plans, establishing durable powers of attorney, and representing them in estate, trust, guardianship, and conservatorship matters. We also provide business owners with succession planning and implementation services such as reorganizations, restructurings, buy-outs, mergers and acquisitions, and various trust planning alternatives.
We create personalized estate plans for our clients, taking both tax and non-tax planning goals into account. We provide clients with peace of mind by tailoring their estate plans to their specific needs and desires, as well as collaborating with their other trusted advisors. Tax planning, wills and revocable trusts, financial and healthcare powers of attorney, life insurance and retirement account planning, asset titling review, planning with non-probate transfers such as beneficiary deeds, drafting trusts for special issues such as incentive trusts, special needs trusts, trusts for minors, pet trusts, and trusts for family cabins, and planning with irrevocable trusts such as intent trusts (ILITs).
We have extensive knowledge of all wealth transfer taxes, including estate tax, gift tax, and generation skipping transfer tax (GST), as well as the income tax implications of trusts and estates. The interplay of these different types of taxes can be extremely complicated. Our attorneys have the knowledge and experience to help clients navigate the maze of wealth transfer taxes and income taxes in order to develop effective estate and succession plans and administer trusts and estates as efficiently as possible.
We guide personal representatives and trustees, assist in asset identification and management, prepare estate and gift tax returns, prepare fiduciary accounts, counsel on elective share and allowances, analyze federal and state tax issues, and advise on discretionary distributions, beneficiary claims, and creditor claims.
We work with family and closely held businesses, including farms and ranches, to develop and implement succession plans. We assist businesses in transitioning ownership and management to future generations of family members, key employees, or others involved in the business. This may include business restructuring, buy-sell agreements, deferred compensation plans, stock option plans, insurance planning, voting trusts, ongoing management agreements, and other planning tools, depending on the nature of the business and circumstances.
We have extensive experience structuring charitable gifts to provide personal rewards to donors and charities while maximizing tax advantages. Our attorneys help high-net-worth clients establish private foundations, charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, charitable gift annuities, and other planned gifts in order to remain involved in a long-term charitable gifting plan.
We represent clients in their senior years and assist them in successfully planning for the seamless management of their personal, healthcare, and financial affairs, including long-term care, Medicare and Medicaid, social security, and, if necessary, guardianship and conservatorship.
We advise clients on how to preserve, protect, and grow their assets so that they have enough money to live on in retirement. We help clients evaluate the benefits of various types of insurance, such as health, disability, and long-term care.
We work with clients to establish guardianships and conservatorships as needed to protect minors, people with disabilities, and others who are unable to manage their financial affairs and personal care on their own. Our attorneys are also skilled at navigating the complex system of government benefits available to people with disabilities, whether as a result of an accident or illness, as well as planning to financially protect those with disabilities through special needs trusts, supplemental needs trusts, and other planning tools.
We offer premarital counseling to clients, assist in the development of premarital wealth management plans, and negotiate and prepare premarital agreements.
We represent fiduciaries, beneficiaries, heirs, and creditors in all stages of economically significant trust and estate disputes, counseling and advocating for clients' rights and options from pre-litigation dispute resolution to trials and appeals. We take a multidisciplinary approach, bringing together experienced litigation counsel with colleagues in the trusts and estates practice group, as well as the firm's extensive professional resources in commercial, real estate, natural resources, taxation, health care, and other practice areas as needed.
