Wills, Trusts and Estates

Turner Padget offers clients assistance in planning during life and at death.  This assistance includes designing and implementing wealth protection techniques, business succession arrangements and estate plans.  Estate planning crosses several legal disciplines, including wills and trusts, estate and gift taxes, real estate transfers, charitable giving, and elder law.  We design plans that, above all, meet our clients’ needs and desires to properly hold their assets during life and to distribute their estates in an orderly and efficient manner at death, giving special attention to reducing estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer taxes in the process. 

 Specific strategies and techniques frequently include:  

  • Testamentary trusts
  • Revocable living trusts
  • Irrevocable life insurance trusts
  • Private foundations
  • Charitable remainder trusts and charitable lead trusts
  • Conservation easements
  • Family-owned business succession agreements
  • Limited liability companies
  • Qualified personal residence trusts
  • Grantor trusts
  • Powers of Attorney

 In addition to our planning services, our attorneys assist individual and corporate fiduciaries, such as banks and trust companies, in fulfilling their legal duties to administer and distribute decedent and trust estates.  These duties include gathering assets, ascertaining and disposing of claims against the estate, determining and identifying heirs and beneficiaries, preparing and filing fiduciary income and estate tax returns where necessary, resolving disputes among heirs and beneficiaries, reducing taxes through post-mortem planning, and distributing estate assets to the appropriate recipients.

Members of our wills, trusts and estates team are particularly well-equipped to serve our clients.  Two of our attorneys are certified by the South Carolina Supreme Court as specialists in Estate Planning and Probate and two are certified specialists in Taxation Law.  One of our attorneys is a former Probate Court judge and is a member of  the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel.  Most members of our team have advanced law degrees in taxation law.  Team members draw on the expertise of other practice groups, such as Real Estate, Corporate and Litigation, in order to fulfill our clients’ needs.

Representative Clients

Wachovia
BB&T
Southeastern Trust Company
South Carolina Bank & Trust
Pee Dee Land Trust