First and foremost, Stephen considers himself a teacher. Tax and estate planning are complicated, but Stephen enjoys making these topics as simple as possible so his clients can be confident they are making the best decisions for themselves, their families, and the charities they care about.
Stephen starts every relationship by helping families articulate their goals. What issues need to be addressed? Are there opportunities to take advantage of? Using his unique background that includes seven years working at leading financial services firms, Stephen helps clients find a balance between tax optimization, complexity, risk, and competing non-tax goals. He then engages a family’s team of advisors to fully integrate their personal, legal, and financial planning.
Stephen’s practice focuses on the needs of wealthy individuals and families, their businesses, and charities. His extensive experience includes domestic and international trust and estate planning, tax minimization, advanced life insurance strategies, and planned charitable giving. He has helped clients with pre-sale and pre-IPO planning, planning with concentrated stock positions, planning with fund interests, trust decanting and trust modifications, minimizing state income taxation of trusts, dynasty trusts, generation skipping transfer (GST) tax, split-dollar life insurance, planning with art, private foundations, charitable lead trusts, and charitable remainder trusts. He has advised families on the formation and operation of foreign trusts, pre-migration planning, foreign investment in U.S. real property, voluntary disclosures, and expatriation.
Stephen has authored or co-authored more than 30 articles. A frequent lecturer, he has spoken at numerous industry conferences in the United States and globally. Stephen currently chairs the Estate and Gift Tax Committee of the Real Property, Trust & Estate Section of the American Bar Association.
