Trust Planning | Estate Tax Strategy | Wealth Transfer | Asset Protection
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. PrivateCounsel designs trust structures and tax strategies that protect what you’ve built, across all 50 states.
Field notes from the intersection of legal counsel and tax strategy.
Wealth Preservation and Tax Strategy
Protect your estate.
Reduce the tax. Control where it goes.
The right trust structure can save your heirs hundreds of thousands in estate tax. But only if it’s in place before the triggering event. These strategies reward early planning.
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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.
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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’s designed for your actual family and asset situation.
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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.
Trust planning at every level of complexity
From foundational trust design through multi-generational wealth transfer.
Design
Trust structure and selection
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Dynasty trusts, GST exemption allocation, and long-term trust administration for wealth that spans generations.
Foundational
Incapacity planning
Powers of attorney, healthcare directives, and HIPAA authorizations are prepared as part of your overall trust planning engagement. These foundational documents ensure your plan works even if you cannot manage your own affairs.
Get a Trust Structure Recommendation
Find out whether your current plan is structured for your family, your business interests, and your tax situation.
Built by an Attorney Who Plans Trusts for Business Owners
I’m Jeramie Fortenberry, a business and tax attorney who has spent more than 20 years helping business owners protect what they’ve built through trust design, estate tax strategy, and business succession planning.
I built this practice because too many business owners get generic estate plans that ignore their most valuable asset: the business itself. Trust planning for a business owner is not the same as trust planning for a W-2 employee, and the consequences of getting it wrong compound across generations.
My goal is to deliver the kind of integrated business and estate planning that high-net-worth families expect from a large firm, with the directness and accessibility they deserve.
Jeramie J. Fortenberry, Esq., Founder
