Jeffrey J. Meek

Jeff provides comprehensive legal counsel on business and estate planning matters, developing comprehensive wealth transfer and protection plans for individuals, families, and privately-held businesses.

A solutions-oriented, pragmatic, and collaborative counselor with over a decade of experience in business management prior to his legal career, Jeff employs his strong business and financial acumen in advising entrepreneurs, executives, and family offices. Jeff applies his knowledge and expertise in advising families and business owners on tax and wealth planning matters, and developing customized strategies that help clients achieve their long-term business, financial, legacy, and estate planning objectives.

Throughout his career, Jeff has counseled high-net-worth, and ultra-high net worth clients with the design of estate, tax, wealth transfer, and risk mitigation plans that integrate succession, tax minimization, and asset protection strategies. Once a plan is approved, he works with families, guiding them through the implementation processes, managing the funding of closely-held entities, and documenting estate freeze defective-trust transactions or other transfers involving dynastic and charitable trusts. Post-implementation, he has experience working with external litigation counsel on fiduciary litigation matters to help ensure the client's wishes are carried out.

As part of his planning process, Jeff routinely:
• Reviews current structures, consults with client CPAs and financial advisors, and advises on potential changes through trust decanting, entity restructuring, settlement agreements, and other planning revisions.
• Conducts due diligence and analysis of tax records, financial data, asset holdings, contractual obligations, and organizational structures in the development of planning strategies.
• Prepares planning illustrations, transaction agendas, and client presentations to outline proposed planning steps, sequencing, and resulting entity and trust structures.
• Develops comprehensive entity structuring, reorganization, and family office plans and drafts related consents, operating agreements, partnership agreements, shareholder agreements, and transactional documents.
• Drafts trust agreements for IDGTs, BDITs, SLATs, ILITs, and GRATs, including provisions for implementing multi-generational defective trusts, upstream planning, QSBS stacking, and directed trusts.