Partner, Chair of the Private Client Group
Dennis R. Delaney
Dennis Delaney is a partner and the chair of the Private Client Group. For over 20 years, clients have appointed Dennis as their family trustee and have engaged him for complex estate planning.
Practice Focus
Dennis Delaney is a partner and the chair of the Private Client Group. For over 20 years, clients throughout the country have appointed Dennis as their family trustee, executor and have engaged him for complex estate planning, tax advice, wealth management, business succession planning, and tax controversies. 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 Managing Director and General Counsel of 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, save millions of dollars in transfer taxes, and maximize 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.
"My job often addresses the intersection of multiple challenges for my clients where solutions require deep expertise in any number of areas such as wealth management, legal issues, tax planning, and navigating family dynamics. In today’s hyper-specialized marketplace, all too often clients are left to knit together the separate advice they receive from multiple experts who don’t see beyond their own areas of expertise. At Hemenway & Barnes, we pride ourselves not only for our deep expertise in these critical areas, but also for our vast experience in connecting it all together. The value we bring is enabling clients to make the most informed and strategic decisions possible, which in turn helps create and preserve wealth for themselves and their families.
— Dennis Delaney’s Comments on Challenges Clients Face