Scope of Practice | Depth of Staff | Breadth of Experience 

Scope of Practice
Lawyers in the Wills, Trusts, and Estates practice group are involved in income, gift, and estate tax planning and related issues for individuals, family businesses, and families of substantial wealth. Our practice includes traditional trust and probate matters; estate planning; income tax planning for individual clients, trusts, and estates; organizational structuring; contested tax matters with the Internal Revenue Service; advice with respect to charitable contributions; all legal aspects of tax-exempt organizations (including private foundations and public charities); and international estate planning. We provide counseling, advocacy, and consultation to our clients in response to specific needs.

Depth of Staff
The Wills, Trusts, and Estates group consists of six lawyers and one paralegal; however, because the practice of tax law involves a wide range of activities, lawyers in the group have broad general tax knowledge and most have developed other areas of tax experience as well. In addition, the lawyers in the Wills, Trusts, and Estates group call on other lawyers throughout the firm on banking, corporate, energy, international, litigation, intellectual property, public law, real estate, and other matters.

V&E has tax lawyers in our Washington office who are able to represent clients in dealings with the Treasury Department Office of Tax Policy and the National Office of the IRS and with staff of Congressional tax-writing committees.

Breadth of Experience
V&E's Wills, Trusts, and Estates practice involves a wide range of activities, including:

• Structuring and preparing wills and trusts, including charitable remainder and lead trusts, trusts designed to hold life insurance, grantor retained annuity trusts
• Qualified personal residence trusts, insurance trusts, and generation-skipping trusts
• Advising fiduciaries and beneficiaries of estates and trusts and negotiating settlements of family disputes
• Negotiating and structuring corporate, real estate, partnership, and other types of business transactions involving family ownership
• Counseling on valuation issues and advising on the retention of appraisers with respect to income, gift, and estate matters
• Advising clients with respect to qualified plans, IRAs, and other similar tax-deferred arrangements
• Negotiating with Internal Revenue Service and state agencies personnel, including the obtaining of IRS rulings and technical advice and opinions from state agencies
• Serving as litigation counsel before various courts
• Drafting federal and state legislative proposals
• Appearing before Treasury Department and State of Texas officials concerning proposed regulations
• Creating and advising private foundations; advising clients with respect to their philanthropic objectives and numerous other similar activities