Joann T. Palumbo is a partner in the Firm’s Trusts & Estates Practice. Leveraging over 30 years of experience, Joann has wide-ranging knowledge of all aspects of estate planning and estate and trust administration.

Joann represents individuals and institutions in a broad range of trusts and estates services, including:

• Estate Planning: Joann drafts wills, living trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, spousal lifetime access trusts, QDOTs (qualified domestic trusts for non-citizen spouses), and charitable trusts and utilizes other techniques to minimize estate taxes including planning with gifts or bequests to charities or charitable trusts. Joann works with other attorneys at the Firm in business succession planning and estate planning for writers, artists, and performers who own intellectual property. She also counsels and plans for couples in second marriages with complex family issues, non-US citizen spouses, non-traditional families, same-sex couples, and unmarried individuals with or without children.
• Estate & Trust Administration: Joann handles probates of wills, administration of estates for decedents without wills, estate tax return preparation, judicial and non-judicial settlements of estates, and post-mortem income tax planning. Joann represents clients in Surrogate’s Court proceedings, including appointments of successor trustees when a trustee wants to resign or dies.
• Tax: Joann counsels clients on reducing estate taxes for clients both at the federal and state level, both during the planning stage and after death by use of disclaimers. Joann works closely with accountants on estate income tax issues and strategizes on how to minimize estate income taxes.