Lesley Moss has been practicing estate law for twenty years at Oram & Moss in Rockville and was voted Potomac Lifestyle’s “Best Estate Planner” for two years in a row. “As an estate attorney,” she notes, “my job is to help my clients structure, whether through trusts, wills, prenups, gifting or documents that will allow their children to thrive and offer protection and the efficient transfer of assets from a tax and/or administrative standpoint.”
Estate planning can include:
1. Trusts
According to Moss, “When we talk about doing estate planning we are always talking about where do you want these assets to go? For most families that is done by making sure we protect the immediate family, the family unit.” She adds, “One of the ways we offer protection is by creating trusts so that the children are inheriting inside a trust and the trust itself will protect an heir from a divorce or creditors.” She explains that “The trust ensures that the child has access to his or her inheritance for the rest of their life but when they pass away it will go to their grandchildren.”
2. Prenuptial and Postnuptial Agreements
Moss acknowledges that encouraging one’s children to consider a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement can be a sensitive issue, but it’s another way to safeguard their inheritance. It can pertain to a couplegetting married where one partner’s parents have assisted in the acquisition of the primary residence and the child decides to include their spouse’s name on the primary residence. For the child already married, a postnuptial agreement can be executed to provide clear legal protection for inherited assets. “Working with our clients we have to decide what is going to happen to those assets if a client has a spouse pass away or in the event of a divorce.” Although trusts offer a lot of protection, there is still the right of a surviving spouse to claim against the estate. Every state has a different spousal election so the prenup is important to assure that the wealth he or she built with their first spouse goes to their kids. And whether forming a prenup or a postnup, both sides need to have their own attorneys. A prenup can also apply to a family business, differentiation between what is my equity in the family business versus what are my earnings. Business success planning is a whole other aspect when one or two siblings are in the family business and others who are not, but everyone in the family owns the business.
3. Tax Planning
Moss states that she is very much a tax-focused law firm. She holds that trusts offer protection not only in the event of remarriage but also from taxation. “With a trust you get the benefit of the estate tax planning at both the federal and Maryland level while ensuring that you are ultimately protecting your children to inherit these assets someday. In addition, the trust can have creditor protection as well.”
4. Gifting
Some people use gifts to their children as part of a larger estate planning strategy to protect assets, but they must be mindful that if they leave assets to children when they are not mature enough to use them wisely, it can be a mistake. An estate planner can help parents discern where their children are in their current life stage. Something to also consider, especially for high-net-worth families, is the idea of gifting now to grandfather in their exemption, as estate tax laws are constantly changing. Moss admits that her job is not always easy and she sometimes finds herself playing the part of mediating family issues and personalities. Ultimately, she says that “What I do allows me to become part of a client's family, and to me that is the most rewarding aspect of what this area of the practice of law is.”