Business Planning | Trust Planning | Tax Strategy | Asset Protection
Strategy is what separates legal structure from legal advantage.
Anyone can file articles of organization or draft a trust. The question is whether the structure is designed for your tax situation, your family, and your exit plan. PrivateCounsel builds legal strategies that connect business structure, tax planning, and estate design into a single coordinated plan.
Business Planning
Structure your business for how you want it to end, not just how it starts.
Business planning strategies cover the full lifecycle: entity formation, ownership structuring, tax classification, operational compliance, relocation, and exit. Each strategy page connects the legal structure to its tax consequence.
Featured Strategies
Multi-state businesses
F Reorganizations
Move your LLC or corporation to a new state without dissolving, re-forming, or triggering a taxable event. The F reorganization is a single-step redomiciliation that preserves your EIN, contracts, and tax elections.
Startup founders
QSBS Structuring
Qualified Small Business Stock can exclude up to $10 million in capital gains from federal tax. But the eligibility requirements are strict, and structuring decisions made at formation determine whether the exclusion is available at exit.
New and growing businesses
Entity Selection and Structuring
LLC or corporation? S election or C? Single entity or holding company? The entity decision is the first structural decision in a business, and it affects everything that follows: tax treatment, liability exposure, equity planning, and exit options.
Business Lifecycle
Form
Choice of Entity
LLC, corporation, S election, or nonprofit: the foundational decision that determines tax treatment, liability exposure, and every structural option that follows.
Structure
Ownership and Equity
Operating agreements, equity splits, management structure, and fiduciary duties. The governance layer that determines who controls the business and how value is allocated.
Operate
Tax Classification
S election timing, C corporation strategies for high-growth startups, pass-through taxation, and distribution planning. The tax classification determines how the business and its owners are taxed.
Relocate
Business Relocation
Domestication, conversion, and F reorganization strategies for moving an LLC or corporation to a new state. 50-state coverage with state-specific filing guides.
Exit
Succession and Exit Planning
Selling, merging, or transitioning a business requires advance planning. Exit tax strategies, QSBS qualification, and business succession planning connect the business side to the estate side.
Protect
Asset Protection
Charging order protection, veil-piercing defense, inside vs. outside liability, and multi-entity structuring. Asset protection is a cross-cutting strategy that applies to both business and trust planning.
Trust Planning
Your legacy is built on the same structures as your business. Plan both.
Trust planning for business owners goes beyond a basic will. Your estate includes operating entities, investment real estate, retirement accounts, and family dynamics that generic plans miss. These strategies cover trust design, estate tax reduction, wealth transfer, and multi-generational planning.
Featured Strategies
Married couples
Estate Tax Strategy
The right trust structure can eliminate estate tax at the first death and minimize it at the second. Marital deduction planning, credit shelter trusts, and QTIP elections are strategic decisions with six-figure consequences.
Business owners and families
Trust Design
Revocable or irrevocable? Standalone or joint? Simple pour-over or funded trust with sub-trusts? The type of trust matters less than whether it is designed for your actual family and asset situation.
Exiting founders
Business Succession
Your business is your largest estate asset. Succession planning connects your exit strategy to your trust structure so neither one undermines the other. The business side and the estate side must be coordinated.
Trust Planning Lifecycle
Design
Trust Structure and Selection
Revocable vs. irrevocable, standalone vs. joint, simple vs. complex: the foundational decision about what type of trust structure fits your family and asset situation.
Protect
Family and Beneficiary Planning
Blended families, children from prior relationships, special needs beneficiaries, noncitizen spouses: each one requires a trust structure designed for the specific dynamic. Not a generic plan.
Preserve
Estate Tax Reduction
Marital deduction planning, credit shelter trusts, QTIP elections, postmortem elections, and funding formula design. The technical core of estate tax strategy.
Transfer
Wealth Transfer Strategies
SLATs, defective grantor trusts, GRATs, ILITs, charitable trusts, and installment sales to grantor trusts: strategies that move appreciation out of the taxable estate during life.
Sustain
Multi-Generational Planning
Dynasty trusts, GST exemption allocation, and long-term trust administration for wealth that spans generations. Planning for the family you have and the family you anticipate.
Not sure where to start?
Every strategy starts with a conversation about your business, your family, and your goals. We will tell you which strategies apply and what the next step looks like.
Built by an Attorney Who Does the Work
PrivateCounsel was founded by Jeramie Fortenberry, a Texas-licensed attorney whose practice spans business structuring, tax planning, trust and estate design, and real estate. The strategies on this site are not theoretical. They reflect the planning approaches Jeramie uses with clients across all 50 states.
Every strategy page is grounded in the same legal analysis that drives client engagements. The content is written at the practitioner level because the audience includes both clients making decisions and attorneys evaluating the firm.
