Estate Planning, Trusts & Estates, and Adoptions

Tallman Hudders & Sorrentino has extensive experience in the areas of estate and trust planning — ranging from drafting simple wills to planning the most tax-efficient and effective succession plan for multimillion dollar families.

Our estate planning lawyers utilize one or more of several techniques to accurately assess and reduce the impact of federal and state income and death taxes on an individual’s net worth or a family’s net worth. Not only do we draft the more typical “I love you” Wills between spouses, but we also prepare grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATS), “defective” grantor trusts, family limited partnerships and personal residence trusts, to name a few.

Three of the corporation’s shareholders have many years of experience in planning estates (often involving closely held business entities) and utilizing corporate and partnership reorganization and gifts, when appropriate. In fact, one of our estate attorneys also boasts a Tax Law Degree (LL.M.) while another was a licensed certified public accountant before obtaining her law degree. The sophistication and experience of our trust and estates department has caused several local judges to employ our attorneys for their own estate planning needs.

Our estate planning practice best exemplifies the benefits of our firm’s broad-based capabilities and collaborative efforts. The firm’s attorneys recognize succession planning issues that confront almost every business and have assisted numerous clients in recognizing the disastrous impact that may result without proper counseling. As our estate planning attorneys support the other practice areas of the firm, our resources are frequently utilized to support collateral estate issues such as real estate, litigation and tax.

In addition, the firm has the resources to efficiently handle the administration of any estate, protecting the personal representative while minimizing the tax consequences to the beneficiaries.

Lastly, one of our estate planners also has extensive experience in adoptions and has handled numerous cases involving children born in Pennsylvania, as well as many other “interstate” adoptions. A local judge who handles these cases has even remarked to adopting parents in his courtroom that our attorney has handled more adoptions than any other attorney in Lehigh County.