Representative Experience
Gerald has had extensive experience in helping individuals preserve their assets through tax and estate planning. He is skilled at setting up trusts, family limited liability companies and partnerships, insurance trusts, and other tax planning vehicles to accomplish family financial planning goals and business succession plans. He has helped businesses of all sizes grow through strategic tax planning, employee benefit planning, and a wide variety of merger and acquisition transactions. He attends meetings of boards of directors to advise them on sensitive corporate and tax matters as well as transaction structure, fiduciary duties, and transaction negotiations.
Gerald is a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC) and the American College of Tax Counsel (ACTC) and is AV rated in the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory. He served as an attorney for the Office of Chief Counsel, Internal Revenue Service from 1967-1970.
Specific Matters
- Primary areas of practice are estate planning, mergers and acquisitions, and succession planning for closely held businesses
- Extensive experience in administration of trusts and estates
- Represents clients with closely held distribution businesses, agribusinesses, real estate development businesses, manufacturing businesses, automobile businesses, retail businesses, and many others to structure succession plans for the preservation of family assets and satisfaction of tax or support liquidity needs
- Assisted numerous clients in accomplishment of charitable giving goals through private foundation formation, qualification and management and through charitable remainder trusts design and formation
- Assisted a client grow a small distribution business into a large national business through mergers and acquisitions now located in 43 states and Canada
- Represented a client in the ready-mixed concrete business which has grown through acquisitions from a local operation to a large, multi-state operation with numerous plants
- Has represented many doctors and medical care groups in the negotiation of contracts, organizational structure, and management of their practices
- Has provided general legal services and advice to a publisher of agricultural magazines, an organizer of agricultural shows, a large hog and turkey agribusiness and processor, cattle ranchers, farmers, and agricultural warehouse operators
- Has negotiated and structured numerous transactions involving the sale or purchase of automobile dealerships
- Is experienced at advising businesses on the use and benefits of ESOPs, profit sharing plans, pension plans, insurance programs, and various executive compensation plans.
Professional Activities
- American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, Fellow
- American College of Tax Counsel, Fellow
- Listed since in The Best Lawyers in America© (1987 - 2008) in the Tax Law category
- Recognized in North Carolina Super Lawyers (2006-2008) in the area of Estate Planning & Probate
- Listed among Business North Carolina's Legal Elite (2002, 2003 & 2008) in the areas of Tax and Estate Planning
- J. Nelson Young Tax Institute, University of North Carolina School of Law
- North Carolina Bar Association
- American Bar Association
Community Activities
- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
- Past Stake President
- Past Bishop
- Past Counselor to Mission President
Associated News / Events
