Vance E. Antonacci
Practices estate planning, business succession planning, and estate and trust administration. Advises multiple generations of successful families and their businesses.
See full profileEstate Planning
Estate planning connects your assets, family, business interests, and intentions for the future. We develop coordinated plans to carry out your wishes, preserve wealth, provide for continuity, and reduce tax exposure.
Our focus
One coordinated plan for your wealth, family, and business
An estate plan should do more than document who will receive your assets. It should account for how wealth is held, who can act during incapacity, and how business or family interests may transition. We advise individuals, families, and business owners on plans built around their circumstances and long-term objectives.
Our work ranges from wills, powers of attorney, and healthcare directives to sophisticated trust and tax-planning strategies. We advise on revocable and irrevocable trusts, life insurance trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, intentionally defective grantor trusts, asset protection trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, and charitable trusts.
For business owners, estate planning often involves both the company’s future and the transfer of personal wealth. We advise on buy-sell agreements, compensation planning, family governance, creditor protection, life insurance, and tax-efficient exit strategies. We coordinate our work with the client’s accountants, financial advisors, and other advisors so each part of the plan supports the same objectives.
Our involvement can continue as circumstances change or a plan must be carried out. We advise executors, trustees, and beneficiaries on estate and trust administration. When disagreements arise, our fiduciary litigators handle contested matters. We also draw on our corporate, tax, nonprofit, and real estate attorneys when those issues influence the plan.
A sound estate plan preserves assets, reduces estate and income tax exposure, prepares for incapacity, and carries out the client’s wishes. We advise on wills, powers of attorney, healthcare directives, and other foundational documents, tailoring each plan to the client’s family, assets, and goals.
Trusts serve different purposes depending on the client’s assets and objectives. We design and implement revocable and irrevocable trusts, including life insurance trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, intentionally defective grantor trusts, asset protection trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, and charitable trusts. For families focused on long-term wealth transfer, we routinely prepare generation-skipping trusts.
Every business owner’s situation is different. We help business owners plan for transitions in ownership, leadership, and control, and advise on tax-efficient structuring, compensation planning, and exit strategies that account for both income tax and estate tax considerations.
We guide executors and trustees through their fiduciary duties, including gathering assets, identifying and paying debts, and preparing income tax, inheritance tax, and estate tax returns. Our work includes interpreting wills and trust agreements, advising on beneficiaries’ rights, and protecting fiduciaries from liability. We also counsel fiduciaries and beneficiaries on transitions to successor fiduciaries, fiduciary accountings, trust modifications and terminations, and the preparation of nonjudicial settlement agreements, Orphans’ Court petitions, and related filings.
We form nonprofit organizations and help them qualify as income tax-exempt. We represent trustees of charitable trusts in Orphans’ Court cy pres proceedings, respond to inquiries from the Office of Attorney General, and advise on compliance with state trust law requirements and IRS private foundation rules. Our clients include public charities, private foundations, educational institutions, hospitals, community foundations, trade associations, and other nonprofit organizations. We counsel these organizations on maintaining tax-exempt status, governance, joint ventures, mergers, asset sales, and other significant transactions.
Contested estate and trust matters often involve both legal complexity and family relationships. We represent executors, trustees, beneficiaries, and guardians in surcharge actions, will contests, objections to fiduciary accounts, elective share claims, guardianship proceedings, and matters involving the interpretation, modification, and termination of wills and trusts. We handle these disputes through nonjudicial settlement agreements, litigation, injunction proceedings, arbitration, and mediation.
Key Contacts
Alison T. Smith
Advises individuals, fiduciaries, and nonprofits on estate planning, trust administration, and charitable matters. Represents clients in fiduciary disputes.
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