CareersEstate Planning
Tax & Wealth Management
Practice Group Leader
Gary A. Zwick, Partner
Gary is a partner who has a general tax practice, with emphasis on tax planning for closely held and family businesses and their owners, and high-net-worth individuals. His focus encompasses not only income tax planning, but also estate planning, retirement plans and planning, business and individual taxation, Subchapters C & S, mergers and acquisitions, employee benefits and Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and tax court practice and controversy work.
216.928.2902
Our Estate Planning Difference
The Walter Haverfield estate planning advantage instills confidence for the future. Our full-service approach provides a broad range of legal services to family-owned or otherwise closely-held businesses with estate-planning issues, including:
- Asset liquidity
- Business valuation
- Transfer of ownership and management control
- Integration of personal and company-sponsored plans
Evidence of our strong skillset is found in the leadership positions we hold in such organizations as the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association’s estate planning section, and our involvement in the Cleveland Society of Estate Analysts and the Estate Planning Council. We regularly publish articles in national publications and teach estate planning at local law schools. Furthermore, our attorneys are sought after as speakers at national and local seminars for other professionals.
Experience
- Consulting and handling estate and wealth planning for owners and operators of closely held and family businesses
- Counseling families in the design of wills, trusts, and other personal planning documents
- Developing complex strategies to minimize transfer taxes for high-net-worth families while achieving family goals
- Experienced in sophisticated planning techniques including GRATs, generation skipping strategies, sales to defective trusts, limited partnerships, life insurance planning, and charitable strategies
- Preparing financial powers of attorney
- Preparing various types of trusts to minimize estate tax
- Utilizing gift planning to benefit beneficiaries and estates
- Funding of trusts
- Utilizing non-probate planning to facilitate the transfer of assets
