Estate Planning and Administration
Serving White Plains & Westchester County, New York

An experienced estate planning attorney can be a critical advisor for you and your family as you prepare for the future. For more than a decade, our firm, with offices currently in Elmsford, and, formerly, in downtown White Plains, offers much needed estate planning counsel tailored to the particular needs of each and every client who we have served throughout New York and New Jersey.

What Does an Estate Planning Attorney Do?

Failing to keep an estate plan current could create monumental issues for family members and loved ones after you’re gone.

An estate planning attorney assists clients by guiding them though the process of creating a comprehensive estate plan.

This will include preparing documents such as a will, perhaps a revocable (living) or irrevocable trust, a durable power of attorney for finances, a living will, and health care proxy. These legal documents will help you direct to whom you want to give your assets after you die, as well as to prepare for an unexpected accident or illness that leaves you incapacitated.

An experienced estate planning attorney partners with clients to fully appreciate their circumstances and understand their objectives for their estates.

Our firm has the knowledge and skills to customize a strategy that addresses your concerns and helps to achieve your objectives.

In addition, we will draw on our extensive experience in tax law matters to benefit you and your loved ones. We will have you consider the latest, most innovative trust and estate products that can, under the right circumstances, defer, reduce, or even eliminate substantial estate and related federal and state tax payments.

These are a few of the other ways an estate planning attorney can assist you:

• Drafting a legally valid will;
• Naming a guardian who will provide and care for your minor children in the tragic event of your passing, or incapacity;
• Creating a living trust to avoid probate and allow you to maintain control over how beneficiaries use your assets;
• Preparing a legally valid and comprehensive Power of Attorney that enables the management of assets by a trusted agent;
• Preparing a health care proxy/living will documents which designate a trusted agent who is authorized to make health care decisions (including end of life care and treatment issues) for you in the event of your incapacity;
• Titling real property correctly to automatically pass to a spouse or other family member upon your death;
• Making sure that your property is protected from your heirs’ creditors;
• Helping to advise on gifting to family members and friends within the limits of the law to minimize gift tax considerations—i.e., annual exclusion and lifetime unified credit limits;
• Making certain that beneficiary designations, and payable on death (POD) or transfer on death (TOD) provisions, are up-to-date and appropriate, on your brokerage and bank accounts, retirement plans, and life insurance policies; and
• Creating a business succession plan to pass a small business to the next generation tax effectively.

The average person isn’t watching the legislature and the courts in New York for changes in laws that might impact an estate plan, but as experienced estate planning attorneys, we do. This includes issues of New York state and federal estate and income taxation, family law, probate, real property, finance, and healthcare. These laws impact estate plans and are always changing. Only an estate planning lawyer will know about the newest rules, statutes, and regulations.

We will also alert you when it’s necessary to update your estate plan, and anticipate important contingencies. Failing to keep an estate plan current could create monumental issues for family members and loved ones after you’re gone.

Finally, an experienced estate planning attorney can be an invaluable resource for your executor, trustee, and  beneficiaries after you pass away to make sure that the probate process in Court runs as smoothly as possible. We are uniquely equipped to help bring your testamentary wishes to fruition.

How Can I Avoid Probate?

In many situations, an individual can create an estate plan with an experienced estate planning attorney that avoids the oftentimes cumbersome and expensive probate process altogether.

In many instances, this involves using a trust. You can also gift assets while you’re still alive, retitle property, or set up payable-on-death accounts for things like checking accounts.

There are many tools at an experienced estate planning attorney’s disposal, and how they are applied depends upon your specific situation. 

Do I Need an Estate Planning Attorney?

Estate planning and tax attorneys have the experience, skills, background, and specialized knowledge to help you with your specific family and financial situations. You want a legal professional who focuses on this area of law.

An experienced estate planning attorney is a must to counsel you with your specific family or financial situations. This includes customized planning when your life and your property place your into one or more of these categories:

• You own one or several companies;
• You’d like to leave assets to charity;
• You’re in a second (or third, etc.) marriage;
• You own real estate in another state or country;
• You have no children;
• You have a member of your family who is disabled or has special needs;
• You have minor children;
• You have children, whether minor or adult, who have issues, such as chemical dependency, money mismanagement, and others;
• You have significant funds in a 401(k) and/or IRA;
• You were recently divorced;
• You plan to remarry;
• Your spouse or other family member recently passed away; or
• You look like you will owe federal and/or New York state estate taxes.

If any of these situations applies to you, we invite you to reach out to us to get guidance and advice on how to create a complete estate plan. If you don’t, it may create problems for your family after you’re gone.

How Do I Find a Good Estate Planning Attorney?

That’s the key: you want to hire an experienced estate planning attorney, not an attorney who says they can write your will or create a trust. Estate planning and tax attorneys have the experience, skills, background, and specialized knowledge to help you with your specific family and financial situations. You want a legal professional who focuses on this area of law.

Our firm, as experienced estate planning and tax attorneys with an enviable record of successful representations and a broad array of satisfied clients, will devote the majority of or all of our practice to estate and tax planning and probate matters. As your attorneys, we pledge our best efforts and determined advocacy, to make your specific needs, questions, and concerns our priority. As much as anything, we want to give you peace of mind, confident that your estate plans are in good, trusted, and skilled hands.

Our attorneys are licensed to practice law in the states of New York and New Jersey.  They are also members of the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA), NYSBA’s Elder Law section, and the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA), and the American Bar Association (ABA).

Contact Us

Contact our law firm, Ely J. Rosenzveig and Associates, P.C. You may email us at [email protected], or call at (914) 816-2900, to discuss how we can help you create or update your comprehensive estate plan, or answer your questions about estate, and tax planning, and administration. It will be our pleasure to assist you.