Our Approach:

Our team is comprised of experienced estate planning lawyers to help clients achieve their goals through a combination of two distinct types of planning: core estate planning (such as wills and revocable trusts) and advanced lifetime strategies (such as gifting, GRATs, etc.). We also offer wider-ranging support, such as advising families through life transitions, providing counsel on business transactions, offering other business or personal advice, and educating and mentoring younger generations. As our clients’ needs evolve, our services evolve with them.

In addition to designing and drafting foundational estate planning documents, we also identify opportunities for meaningful tax planning and wealth transfer through specialized estate planning vehicles (such as irrevocable trusts, LLCs and GRATs) and serve as strategic advisors on key legal issues for your family, including real estate, corporate, fund formation, executive compensation, and intellectual property.

Through our SEC-registered investment advisor, Choate Investment Advisors, we provide comprehensive, integrated investment services to help our clients manage their assets and plan for the long term. We use a broad range of investment asset classes to maximize returns consistent with our clients’ risk preferences. Our advisors have access to the leading investment managers from around the world. We continually monitor these managers’ strategies and performance, and leverage their resources, to sustain competitive overall returns for our clients’ portfolios.

We have no proprietary products to sell and receive no hidden commissions, allowing us to be fully aligned with our clients’ interests as we help them to accomplish their family goals. Unlike many investment advisors, we are not built with the idea of eventually selling our business; this means that our clients can trust that we will be putting their interests – rather than our own – first for generations to come.

Choate Wealth has been creating and maintaining trusts for over 100 years. Our trust advisors coordinate tasks related to the administration of a family’s accounts, including cash management, reporting and recordkeeping, trust administration, gifting, management of special assets, opening and closing of accounts, and the execution of estate planning strategies. We also have an experienced team for administering deceased clients’ estates, navigating the probate process, and preparing estate tax returns to ensure that clients’ wishes are properly fulfilled.

Choate partners often serve as our clients’ trustees and executors, providing continuity and stability over many generations. In this role, we are able to provide personal and attentive service that sets us apart from traditional corporate fiduciaries. We seek regular contact with client families to ensure that our approach continues to meet the needs of the particular family – something not often available to clients working with large corporate banks or trust companies. Coupled with our technical legal and tax advice, our high level of responsiveness and personal service distinguishes us from our corporate fiduciary peers.

Our team of tax professionals provide efficient and accurate tax compliance, and integration of tax planning with our families’ overall plans and objectives. We consider the full range of tax implications in our work, including gifting strategies.

With extensive experience handling the unique distribution, reporting, and planning needs of our clients’ philanthropic and charitable giving, we regularly help clients navigate complicated private foundation tax rules, and any other legal and tax issues that arise with respect to a family’s charitable activities. We provide clients with investment management strategies that align with mission goals, legal and tax planning to ensure compliance with state laws and the IRS, guidance for cultivating and maintaining strategic nonprofit partnerships, a wide range of grantmaking services, and foundation administration and compliance services.