Planning for Real Estate & Business Interests
Youor clients who own investment property, rental real estate, or a closely held business, estate planning involves more than a trust and a will. It requires coordinating every asset — and every entity — into a plan that actually holds together.
Most estate plans are designed around personal assets: a home, investment accounts, retirement savings. But for clients who own rental property, LLCs, closely held businesses, or complex real estate portfolios, those assets introduce a different set of planning challenges — and opportunities.
Getting this right requires understanding not just how your assets are titled today, but how they should be structured to provide protection, minimize transfer costs, and reflect your long-term intentions for your family and your business.
LLC Ownership and Structure
Limited liability companies are a common and effective vehicle for holding investment real estate and business interests. But an LLC that isn't coordinated with your estate plan is only doing half its job.
I work with clients to ensure that:
LLC membership interests are properly reflected in — or transferred to — their revocable living trust, so those interests pass to beneficiaries without probate and without ambiguity
Operating agreements are drafted or reviewed to address what happens to a membership interest at the death or incapacity of an owner
Multi-member LLCs account for the estate planning implications for all owners, not just the client in front of me
The liability protection the LLC provides isn't inadvertently undermined by improper titling or a gap in the estate plan
A well-structured LLC paired with a properly drafted trust is one of the most effective combinations in estate planning for real property owners. Getting the coordination right is the key.
Proper Asset Titling
How an asset is titled determines how it passes at death. A property owned jointly with right of survivorship passes to the surviving co-owner regardless of what the will or trust says. An account with a named beneficiary passes to that beneficiary regardless of what the trust says. An LLC interest owned in your individual name — rather than in your trust — may go through probate.
Titling errors are among the most common — and most consequential — estate planning mistakes. They surface at exactly the wrong moment: when a family is grieving and trying to settle an estate, only to discover that the plan they thought they had doesn't govern the asset they most cared about.
Part of every engagement I undertake is a systematic review of how your assets are held and a clear set of instructions for getting the titling right. For clients with real estate holdings, that typically includes coordination with a Connecticut real estate attorney if deed transfers are required.
Business Succession Planning
For clients who own a closely held business — whether a professional practice, a family company, or a growing enterprise — the question of what happens to that business is often the most important planning question they face.
Business succession planning addresses:
Who takes ownership of the business interest at your death, and on what terms
Whether a buy-sell agreement is in place among co-owners — and whether it's funded with life insurance
How the business interest is valued for estate tax purposes, and whether planning is in place to address that exposure
Whether the business should be held in trust, and what kind of trustee authority is appropriate for a business asset
How to align the succession plan with your personal estate plan so the two aren't working against each other
I approach business succession as an integrated part of the estate plan — not a separate exercise to be handled later and never quite connected.
Multi-State Real Estate
Owning property in more than one state creates a probate problem: without proper planning, each state where you own real estate requires its own probate proceeding at your death. A properly funded revocable living trust eliminates ancillary probate entirely, allowing out-of-state property to pass to your beneficiaries without any additional court proceedings.
For clients with vacation homes, investment properties, or rental holdings outside Connecticut, this is one of the clearest practical benefits of trust-based planning.
Coordination with Your Advisors
Real estate and business planning often involves more than one professional. I work collaboratively with clients' financial advisors, accountants, and — where business valuation or entity structuring is involved — with other specialists who can contribute to a complete picture.
The goal is a plan where every piece fits: the trust, the will, the LLCs, the operating agreements, the beneficiary designations, and the titling all pointing in the same direction.
If you own real estate or a business interest and aren't sure how your estate plan accounts for it — or whether it does at all — that's a conversation worth having sooner rather than later.