Joe Ferrucci is a hands-on trusts and estates attorney with more than a decade of experience. He regularly assists his clients with estate planning related not only to ordinary wills and revocable living trusts, but also sophisticated estate planning strategies with respect to gift tax, estate tax and the generation-skipping transfer tax. He has experience establishing and administering irrevocable gift trusts, irrevocable life insurance trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, and charitable trusts. He also advises clients on real property matters and Prop 13 property tax planning.
Mr. Ferrucci also has extensive experiencing handling estate and trust administration matters following the incapacity or death of a loved one. He has represented clients in probate matters before the courts in San Francisco, Marin, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties.
REPRESENTATIVE EXPERIENCE
- Collaboration with UK counsel to develop a bi-national estate plan for UK citizens living as permanent residents in California, successfully reducing their exposure to both US estate tax and UK inheritance tax.
- Establishing irrevocable “Crummey” trusts, for clients who wished to use their gift tax annual exclusion and lifetime exemption to start transferring assets to their teenage children.
- Working with newlyweds and their family law attorneys to develop an estate plan consistent with the terms of their pre-marital agreement, which reflects and preserves the separate and community property character of their respective income and assets.
- Development of an estate plan and property co-ownership agreement for registered domestic partners, which took into account their gift tax exposure resulting from non-recognition of their relationship at the federal level.
- Representation of private professional fiduciaries on multiple estate and trust administration matters throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
- Successfully completing a probate matter in Alameda County involving interests in a family partnership and ranchland in Solano County, which was complicated by disputing partners and the need to replace the estate administrator mid-way through the proceedings due to illness.
- Successful representation of a creditor claim in probate for a client based on a prior child support order, following the death of her co-parent.