Practice Focus

Dennis Delaney is a partner and the chair of the Family Office Services Group. He has more than 25 years of experience serving high net worth clients as a family wealth advisor, personal trustee, executor, and trusted advisor. His expertise also includes complex estate planning, long-term charitable giving programs, tax matters and promoting family harmony through thoughtful planning. Dennis frequently works with clients for many years and through multiple generations, serving as their trustee, wealth manager and family advisor.

His areas of expertise include:

• Serving as trustee on trusts that benefit individuals, families and charities
• Sophisticated estate planning that makes use of any number of strategies, including perpetual dynasty trusts, quiet trusts, complex gifting programs, "defective" grantor trusts, minors trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts (GRAT), qualified personal residence trusts (QPRT), and charitable giving programs involving private foundations, donor advised funds, and charitable lead/remainder trusts
• Helps establish and run both new family offices and family offices that have been operating for multiple generations
• Income and estate tax minimization strategies, including expertise in migrating trusts to tax-free jurisdictions
• Comprehensive asset protection programs using irrevocable trusts, LLCs, and other vehicles
• Represents principals of venture capital and private equity firms in creating family gifting programs for carried interests
• Open lands preservation
• Strategies for concentrated wealth holdings and unique assets
• Business succession planning for family-owned businesses
• Amending irrevocable trusts, including non-judicial settlement agreements, modifications, and decanting assets from existing irrevocable trusts to newly created trusts
• Cross-border planning for non-citizens or those with assets outside the U.S.
• IRS audits of estate and income tax returns

Dennis also serves as Chief Operating Officer, Managing Director and Chair of the Trust Committee at Hemenway Trust Company, a private fiduciary firm based in New Hampshire.

Representative Experience

• Serves as trustee for numerous family and charitable trusts collectively worth several hundred million dollars.
• Oversees business succession and estate planning for a family owning a $200 million private company.
• Creating and administering dozens of grantor retained annuity trusts (GRAT) resulting in saving clients many millions of dollars in transfer taxes.
• Led several land protection projects throughout the country using a variety of sophisticated techniques to protect environmentally sensitive land from development, saved millions of dollars in transfer taxes, and maximized after-tax values for owners and their families.
• Created and administer private foundations, charitable lead trusts, and charitable remainder trusts involving tens of millions of dollars in funding.