Profile

A member of Winstead's Wealth Preservation Practice Group, Ben Carter has extensive experience representing individuals in estate planning and business succession planning matters. He also has experience representing fiduciaries and beneficiaries in litigation matters.

Ben's representative work includes estate and gift tax planning, wills and ancillary documents, probate and estate administration, post-mortem tax planning, fiduciary responsibility advice, trust and estate litigation, business succession plan implementation and installment sale of limited partnership interests to grantor trusts. He is also board certified in estate planning and probate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and a fellow in the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel.

Representative Experience

• Represent international individuals with estate planning for assets within and outside the United States
• Represent clients in connection with establishing and administering legal guardianships and conservatorships
• Participate in estate tax audits and directly represent individuals and estates in front of the Internal Revenue Service
• Prepare estate tax returns and fiduciary income tax returns
• Provide counsel to corporate trustees and trust departments
• Advise families concerning general estate and income tax planning issues ranging from applicable exclusion amount and marital deduction planning to generation-skipping and charitable deduction planning
• Assist married individuals with estate planning in both separate property and community property states, including the preparation of joint revocable trusts
• Prepare premarital and postnuptial agreements to protect family wealth
• Draft irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs) to leverage annual gift tax and generation-skipping tax exemptions
• Advise families with respect to minority-interest and marketability discounts and drafts family limited partnerships (FLPs) and limited liability companies (LLCs) to hold family assets and ultimately reduce transfer taxes
• Advise and implement grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), qualified personal residence trusts (QPRTs), self-canceling installment notes (SCINs), and installment sales to defective grantor trusts (IDGTs)