Goodsill provides comprehensive counsel to clients on all aspects of estate planning, trust administration, probate, guardianship, will contests, and trust controversies. We have served generations of clients from a variety of backgrounds, family circumstances and wealth. To achieve each client’s objective, attorneys in the Trusts and Estate’s Group work directly with the client and, where appropriate, as part of a counseling team that might include other attorneys in the firm, accountants, financial planners, trust officers, insurance agents, or other professional advisors. We are counsel to Hawaii’s oldest and largest corporate fiduciary, and to trustees of some of Hawaii’s largest trusts. The services we provide include:

• Basic Estate Planning – preparation of revocable living trusts, wills, durable powers of attorney (for both asset management and health care decisions), living wills, and irrevocable trusts, including life insurance trusts.
  
  
• Advanced Estate Planning – preparation of generation skipping trusts, family limited partnerships, qualified domestic trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, charitable remainder trusts, grantor retained income trusts, “defective” irrevocable trusts.
  
  
• International Estate Planning – advice on U.S. estate tax matters and preparation of domestic documents for non-U.S. citizens, including trusts, wills, partnerships or other entities.
  
  
• Business Succession Planning – documentation of buy-sell agreements for corporations and partnerships, choice of business entity decisions, reorganizations of corporations to achieve estate planning goals, and asset protection planning.
  
  
• Probate and Trust Administration – representation of fiduciaries (personal representatives of probate estates and trustees of trusts) on all aspects of probate and trust administration, including issues of accounting for principal and income, income taxation of trusts and estates, tax compliance, prudent investor decisions and fiduciary responsibility/liability.
  
  
• Post Mortem Planning – counseling families, fiduciaries and accountants with respect to planning after death, including disclaimers, tax elections and allocation between sub-trusts.
  
  
• Will and Trust Disputes – defending fiduciaries in will and trust contests, as well as advocating for beneficiaries in will and trust challenges.
  
  
• Fiduciary Litigation – defending fiduciaries in suits for breach of fiduciary duty, as well as advancing claims for beneficiaries for fiduciary abuse.
  
  
• Tax Controversies – representation of fiduciaries in connection with estate tax and income tax audits, including issues of valuations, discounts and tax elections.