Lawyers in White & Case's Private Clients practice assist high-net-worth individuals and families that control substantial assets with the accumulation, management, and transfer of personal wealth. We also advise the financial institutions that serve these clients in a fiduciary capacity. Our services, heavily tax-oriented, include management and succession planning for closely-held businesses; domestic and international tax planning; corporate finance and restructuring; estate planning and transfer of wealth; estate administration; compensation and retirement planning; fiduciary litigation; and a wide range of services to fiduciaries and charitable organizations.

Tax and Estate Planning
White & Case helps clients with an overall estate plan that allows an orderly and tax-efficient transfer of assets. We often advise in multigenerational family situations. Our lawyers work closely with their clients' professional advisors – trust officers, investment advisors, accountants, insurance planners – on managing and transferring assets. We also provide estate and trust administration services and advise on post-mortem tax planning.

Closely held businesses have particularly complex tax issues. We have substantial experience in domestic and international tax planning for these businesses and their owners. We also counsel the families that control many of the world's largest multinational companies in Europe, Latin America, and Asia on income and estate tax issues that characterize these entities and help with plans for the orderly and tax-efficient disposition of such assets to succeeding generations.

Representing U.S. and non-U.S. individuals on domestic and offshore tax and estate planning, we set up domestic and offshore trust vehicles and work with banking institutions in Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas and the Island of Jersey, among others. The Firm also represents individual clients on audits of their tax returns on issues involving domestic income, gift, and estate taxes.

Business Counseling
Because business considerations are closely linked to personal tax and estate planning for owners of closely-held businesses and families that control substantial assets, White & Case advises on a broad range of management issues including succession planning, corporate finance, stock holdings, restructuring, and ongoing management.

Compensation and Retirement Planning
White & Case assists senior executives with employment contracts, compensation arrangements, compensation agreements, golden parachutes, and stock option plans, as well as on retirement planning. We also advise on compensation issues in the context of corporate transactions. The Firm represents non-U.S. nationals in the United States and U.S. citizens posted overseas, counseling issues from tax planning to domicile matters.

Charitable Organizations
The Firm represents the foundation and endowment community and tax-exempt organizations on their operations, including investment transactions. We have worked with over 100 foundations on such issues as investments, grants, financing transactions, tax, and operations. We also help charities to structure innovative planned-giving arrangements.

Fiduciary Services
We provide a variety of advisory, compliance, and dispute resolution services to both the institutional and private-client areas of bank trust departments and trust companies. We also advise our institutional clients that are ERISA plan sponsors on employee retirement plans. New opportunities to serve the private clients market often involve new product or service issues outside the realm of traditional trust activities. New fiduciary requirements are being applied to trustees and advisors responsible for trust and estate administration, investment advisory services, mutual funds, ESOPs for private middle-market companies and individually managed accounts, derivative products, insurance, and real estate. In addition to supporting their day-to-day fiduciary activities, we also work with our institutional clients to develop new products and services for their private client customers.

White & Case assists Bank Trust departments in adapting their investment procedures to the recently enacted New York Prudent Investor Act. We also represent them on legal challenges to their administration of individual trusts and commingled funds and provide counsel to individual clients in fiduciary litigation matters, such as will contests and construction proceedings.