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Julia Frey, Norma Stanley Recognized in 2022 Best Lawyers: Family Law Publication

December 20, 2021

Lowndes is pleased to announce that attorneys Julia L. Frey and Norma Stanley have been recognized in the Trusts & Estates category (Florida) in the 2022 Best Lawyers: Family Law edition, a publication of Best Lawyers®.

This stand-alone publication features more than 7,000 lawyers, including more than 350 “Lawyer of the Year” honorees, recognized in the 2022 editions of The Best Lawyers in America® and the Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch in America. "Lawyer of the Year" honorees are based on extremely high overall feedback within specific practice areas and metropolitan regions.

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Julia

Julie Frey is a shareholder and chair of the Private Wealth Services group. She is board certified by The Florida Bar. Her principal areas of practice are estate planning, probate, trust administration, guardianship, elder law and federal tax.

Julie counsels a broad range of clients, including high net worth clients with needs for sophisticated estate planning techniques, physicians and others who have specific needs with respect to asset protection, couples who are in second marriages, domestic partners, “sandwich generation” individuals who have planning concerns for their parents, their children and themselves, and individuals with a net worth that may not be subject to estate tax but who have planning needs and concerns for children, special needs trusts and other important issues.

Julie works with individuals and families to plan family wealth transfers consistent with the family’s goals and with federal estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer tax planning. Techniques include wills, trusts, family limited partnerships, limited liability companies, grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), sales to intentionally defective trusts, charitable trusts, charitable foundations, marital deduction planning and generation-skipping transfer tax planning.

Since the nature of the estate and gift transfer tax system encourages gifts, Julie prepares a variety of irrevocable trusts that can serve as vehicles for making lifetime gifts to family members, thereby reducing the effective rate of transfer tax. Julie prepares federal estate and gift tax returns. She represents trustees and personal representatives in their administration of trusts and estates. At other times, she assists beneficiaries with the enforcement of their rights in an estate and/or trust.

Julie also represents parties with respect to trust construction matters and will contests with the firm’s litigation group.

Norma

Norma Stanley is a shareholder, is board certified in Wills, Trusts & Estates by The Florida Bar and holds a Master of Laws in Taxation. She advises clients on estate planning, federal tax, probate, trust administration, guardianships and elder law.

With more than 25 years of legal experience in wealth transfer, business succession, sophisticated tax, trust and estate planning, estate and trust administration and family office creation, Norma represents a myriad of clients, including high net worth individuals and their families, beneficiaries of trusts and estates, trustees and small business owners.

In addition to providing estate planning, including complex estate planning for high net worth individuals, planning for moderately wealthy individuals, and basic planning for modest, non-taxable estates, Norma also provides estate planning services such as estate, gift and generation skipping transfer tax planning, including family office planning, irrevocable trust planning, grantor retained annuity trusts planning, sales to defective grantor trust planning, qualified personal residence trust planning and charitable planning, including charitable trusts and private foundations, family limited partnerships, business succession planning and asset protection planning.

Norma offers probate and estate administration services which include formal administration and summary (small estate) administration and the preparation and filing of federal estate tax returns (Form 706). Trust administration services include wealth transfer management, trust modifications and providing advice to trustees and other fiduciaries as well as representation of trust beneficiaries.

Additional related services include federal estate and gift tax audit representation and preparation and filing of applications for recognition of exemption related to private foundations (Form 1023).

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