Private Client Services

A Private Client Services practice consolidates the services that high-net-worth families and business owners typically manage through separate, disconnected advisors – estate planning, tax planning, business law, and international compliance. At Frost Law, we bring tax, estate planning, and business attorneys together under one roof, coordinated with an affiliated fiduciary wealth management firm. This integrated approach matters most when your concerns span multiple states, multiple entities, or multiple countries.

An estate planning attorney for a high-net-worth family goes beyond drafting a will. The work typically includes structuring trusts to reduce estate and gift tax exposure, coordinating lifetime gifting strategies, planning for generation-skipping transfers, and addressing state residency or domicile issues that affect how much tax a family's estate ultimately owes. For families with a business, real estate, or investments across state lines, the plan also has to anticipate how those assets pass to heirs without triggering unnecessary tax or probate delay. Frost Law's Private Client Services group builds these plans with attorneys who are also CPAs, so the tax modeling behind a gifting or trust strategy is handled in the same conversation as the legal drafting.

A revocable trust can be changed or dissolved by the person who created it at any time, which makes it a common tool for avoiding probate and keeping asset management private. However, it offers no protection from estate tax or creditors. An irrevocable trust cannot be changed once it is funded, and that permanence is exactly what allows it to remove assets from the taxable estate. This protects assets from creditors, and, in the case of certain trust types, provides income tax advantages. The right choice depends on whether the client's priority is flexibility and probate avoidance or a certain reduction in future estate tax exposure. Your trust attorney at Frost Law will walk you through this tradeoff, then draft and fund whichever structure, or combination of structures, fits your goals.

A Spousal Lifetime Access Trust (SLAT) is an irrevocable trust one spouse creates for the benefit of the other, using part of their lifetime gift tax exemption to move assets out of the taxable estate. The trust lets the beneficiary spouse remain eligible to receive distributions, which gives the couple continued indirect access to the assets even though they have technically been given away. SLATs are frequently used by married couples who want to lock in a large gift tax exemption before it potentially decreases, without giving up all practical access to the wealth. Your wealth planning attorney can structure SLATs carefully to avoid drafting pitfalls like the reciprocal trust doctrine, and coordinate the funding with the family's broader estate plan.

A Grantor Retained Annuity Trust (GRAT) lets a person transfer an asset into a trust while retaining the right to receive fixed annuity payments back for a set term of years. If the asset appreciates faster than the IRS's assumed interest rate, that excess growth passes to the remainder beneficiaries free of additional gift tax at the end of the term. GRATs are especially useful for assets expected to appreciate quickly, such as a pre-IPO equity stake or a business interest ahead of a sale. Frost Law can research and model the annuity payments and the underlying asset's projected growth before recommending a GRAT, since the strategy only produces a benefit if the assumptions hold up.

An Intentionally Defective Grantor Trust (IDGT) is an irrevocable trust designed so that it is complete for estate tax purposes but disregarded for income tax purposes. This means that the assets are out of the grantor's taxable estate while the grantor still pays the trust's income tax personally. That ongoing tax payment is not treated as an additional gift, so it functions as a way to let trust assets grow for beneficiaries without being reduced by tax drag. IDGTs are commonly paired with a sale of appreciating assets to the trust in exchange for a promissory note, which can move future growth to the next generation with minimal gift tax cost. Your irrevocable trust attorney can draft and fund IDGTs and structure the accompanying installment sale, then coordinate the trust's ongoing income tax reporting.