Melissa focuses her practice on private client and family wealth planning, corporate, and transactional matters, counseling clients on a variety of business and tax matters. She has significant experience advising businesses of all sizes on issues related to formation and dissolution, ongoing corporate governance issues, commercial contracts and contract negotiation, and business succession (including strategic sales, acquisitions and mergers). Her background in tax and estate planning enables her to bring a creative but practical approach to her clients' legal concerns, and her emphasis on understanding clients' business models enables her to meet their needs. Specifically, Melissa routinely advises clients on estate planning; estate and trust administration; premarital planning; planning for retirement assets; charitable giving; and income, estate, generation-skipping transfer, and gift tax planning. Melissa also counsels cross-border clients on pre-immigration planning, foreign and domestic trust issues (including fiduciary income taxation issues), and compliance with FATCA and CRS, as well as U.S. clients on planning for assets in foreign jurisdictions. In addition, she counsels clients on trust and estate litigation matters, including trust accountings, will contests, guardianship proceedings, and actions for construction and reformation of trusts and wills.
