High Net Worth Estate Planning PA

Beyond Basic Estate Planning

Most estate planning firms are built around a standard will-trust-power-of-attorney template. Fine work for most people, but families with significant wealth face planning decisions that require more depth, more coordination, and more experience.

We work with high net worth families who want a primary attorney who knows them, coordinates with their existing advisor team, and delivers sophisticated planning without the price tag or impersonal feel of a national firm.

What Changes When Wealth Is Significant

Pennsylvania Inheritance Tax Becomes a Real Number

Pennsylvania is one of only a handful of states that still imposes an inheritance tax on transfers at death. The rates are 0% to a surviving spouse, 4.5% to lineal descendants (children, grandchildren), 12% to siblings, and 15% to others. On a $2 million estate passing to children, that is $90,000. On a $5 million estate, it is $225,000. Planning strategies including lifetime gifting, trust structures, and entity ownership can reduce this exposure meaningfully.

Your Plan Needs to Do More Than Distribute Assets

A simple will divides your property and names an executor. A high net worth family's plan also coordinates beneficiary designations across multiple retirement accounts, handles property across state lines, accounts for blended family dynamics, protects an inheritance from a child's divorce or creditors, and anticipates the incapacity planning you will almost certainly need before death.

Beneficiary Designations Matter More Than Your Will

At this level, retirement accounts often represent 40% to 60% of the estate. Those accounts pass by beneficiary designation, not by will. Getting the designations wrong (naming the wrong person, naming a minor child directly, naming an estate as backup) can trigger unnecessary tax, probate, and family conflict. We review every designation as part of the planning process.

Incapacity Planning Is Not Optional

Most families will experience a period of cognitive decline or incapacity before death. Pennsylvania's durable power of attorney statute gives you meaningful control over who manages your finances and under what circumstances, but only if the document is drafted carefully. A generic form will not include the Medicaid planning powers, gifting authority, or trust funding powers a family at this level actually needs.

The Current Planning Environment

The One Big Beautiful Bill, enacted in July 2025, made the federal estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer tax exemption permanent at $15 million per person, $30 million for a married couple. For the first time in decades, high net worth families can plan with confidence that the exemption will not sunset or be clawed back in the next administration.

This changes the math significantly. Dynasty trusts become more valuable because the assets moved into them compound outside the estate for generations. Gifting strategies shift from tax urgency to family planning. Charitable planning becomes a tool for values transmission rather than a tax workaround.

What Actually Reduces Pennsylvania Inheritance Tax, and What Does Not

Because the federal exemption sits where it does, the tax most Pennsylvania families will actually pay is the state inheritance tax, from the first dollar. That makes it worth being precise about which strategies reach it, because several of the most popular ones do not.

What does not reduce it:

• A revocable living trust. This is the most expensive misconception in Pennsylvania estate planning. A revocable trust avoids probate. It does not avoid inheritance tax. Assets in it are taxed exactly as they would have been in your own name, because Pennsylvania taxes the transfer at death rather than the court process. Families who paid for a trust specifically to avoid this tax are usually surprised, and usually after the fact.
• Adding a child to a deed or an account shortly before death. A joint interest created within one year of death is generally fully taxable, so the deathbed transfer meant to save tax saves nothing, and may create a gift tax filing, a basis problem and a creditor exposure that did not exist before.
• Simply being under a threshold. There is none. Pennsylvania inheritance tax reaches the first dollar.

What does:

• Transfers to a surviving spouse, taxed at zero. The real question is not whether to use this but how much to defer to the second death, where 4.5 percent then applies to everything deferred.
• Lifetime gifts made more than one year before death, which fall outside the tax entirely. The most reliable lever available, and one that only works if it is pulled early.
• Life insurance on your life, exempt whether paid to a named beneficiary or to the estate. For a family facing a large bill on illiquid assets it does two jobs: it escapes the tax itself and supplies the cash to pay the tax on everything else.
• Charitable transfers, which are exempt. See planned giving.
• The family farm and family business exemptions, which remove qualifying operating assets from the taxable estate rather than discounting them. Where a family's wealth sits in a company or in ground, this is the largest single item of planning available. See the exemptions.
• Paying within three months, which earns a 5 percent discount. It requires no planning at all, only an executor who knows to pay an estimate before the return is finished.

Read together the list says something useful about timing: almost everything that works has to happen while you are alive and well, and most of it more than a year before it matters.

Asset Protection in Pennsylvania

Families at this level ask about protecting assets from creditors, from a child's divorce, or from professional liability. The honest starting point is that Pennsylvania has not adopted a domestic asset protection trust statute. A self-settled trust, where you both fund it and benefit from it, does not shield assets from your own creditors here. Marketing for out-of-state and offshore structures is abundant, and the analysis is considerably more complicated than it is usually presented for a Pennsylvania resident holding Pennsylvania assets.

What does work is less exciting:

• Tenancy by the entireties. Property held by a married couple in this form is generally protected from the creditors of one spouse alone. Genuinely useful and underused in Pennsylvania, and also fragile: it ends at divorce and at the first death, which is often when it is most needed.
• Trusts for your beneficiaries rather than for yourself. You cannot shelter your own assets from your own creditors, but you can leave an inheritance in trust so it is protected from your child's divorce, creditors and judgments. This is the most effective protection most families can actually use, and it costs nothing beyond drafting it properly.
• Entity structure for operating and rental assets, which separates that liability from personal assets where the formalities are respected. See investment properties.
• Retirement accounts and life insurance, which carry meaningful creditor protection under state and federal law.
• Insurance. The first line of defense, and the one most often undersized. An umbrella policy matched to the real exposure prevents more loss than any structure.

Timing matters more than structure. Transfers made once a claim is already foreseeable can be unwound as fraudulent transfers, so protection built after the problem appears tends not to be protection at all.

Much of your net worth in stock options, RSUs or private company shares? Equity awards are governed by a plan document rather than by your will, and they can expire during probate. See stock options, RSUs and your estate plan.

Property in More Than One State

Families at this level commonly own something elsewhere: a shore house, a condominium in Florida, hunting ground across a line, an interest in an out-of-state business. Real property is governed by the law of the state where it sits, which creates two problems a Pennsylvania plan does not solve by itself.

The first is ancillary administration. Out-of-state real estate held in your own name generally requires a second probate in that state, with its own court, counsel and timetable, running alongside the Pennsylvania estate.

The second is other states' death taxes. Several states tax estates at thresholds far below the federal exemption, and some reach property owned by non-residents. A family with no federal exposure at all can still owe tax to a state they only visit in summer.

Both are usually handled the same way, by holding the out-of-state property through a trust or an entity so that what passes at death is an interest rather than the real estate itself. Much easier to arrange when the property is bought than afterward.

How We Help

Dynasty Trusts and Multi-Generational Planning

A properly structured dynasty trust holds wealth for the benefit of children, grandchildren, and beyond, minimizing estate and GST tax at each generation and protecting assets from creditors, divorce, and mismanagement. We design dynasty trust structures that fit your family's values and distribution philosophy, not a cookie-cutter template.

Business Succession Planning

When a significant portion of your wealth is tied up in a closely held business, the estate plan and the succession plan cannot be separated. We coordinate buy-sell agreements, life insurance funding, management transition timelines, and grantor trust structures so that the business survives the transition and the family is treated fairly, whether they are active in the business or not.

Gifting Strategies

With the $15M exemption now permanent, lifetime gifting is no longer primarily a tax race against sunset. But it remains valuable for families who want to see their children and grandchildren benefit during their lifetime, move appreciating assets out of the estate early, or use irrevocable grantor trust structures to supercharge tax-efficient wealth transfer.

Asset Protection

High net worth families face disproportionate litigation risk. We design protective structures (including asset protection trusts, LLC holding structures, and spendthrift provisions for beneficiaries) to shield principal from future claims without triggering fraudulent transfer issues.

Real Estate and Closely Held Entities

Vacation homes, investment properties, commercial real estate, and family partnerships each have their own planning quirks. We handle the coordination between the estate plan and the entity documents so that ownership transitions smoothly at death or disability.

Charitable Planning

For families with a philanthropic bent, charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, private foundations, and donor-advised funds can achieve both family and charitable goals. We help you choose the right vehicle for the right purpose.

Coordination With Your Advisor Team

You likely already have a wealth advisor, a CPA, and perhaps an insurance professional. We work alongside them, not around them. Our job is to make sure the legal structures support what the financial and tax teams are doing, and that everyone is operating from the same plan.

Common Situations We Handle

• The retired couple with substantial assets. Primary residence, vacation home, retirement accounts, brokerage accounts, and adult children with varying financial circumstances. A coordinated plan that handles multi-state property, protects the surviving spouse, and treats the children fairly.
• The business owner. A closely held company, a buy-sell agreement, key employees, and a family plan that needs to coordinate with the business exit.
• The professional with a practice. Physician, dentist, accountant, or attorney with a practice, professional building, retirement plans, and significant lifetime earning power.
• The blended family. A second marriage where both spouses brought meaningful wealth, children from prior relationships, and the tension between providing for the current spouse and preserving inheritance for children.
• Multi-generational wealth. Families looking for a primary attorney rather than a trust department to oversee structures that span generations.
• The family with sentimental property. A cabin, a farm, or real estate the family wants to keep together through the next generation, with clear rules about use, maintenance, and what happens if someone wants out.

Free Download: HNW Estate Planning Guide

Our comprehensive guide covers the key strategies, Pennsylvania-specific considerations, and planning decisions that families with significant wealth need to understand: dynasty trusts, gifting, asset protection, business succession, and more.

What You Should Know Going In

Our fees are transparent: we discuss cost openly during your initial conversation so you can make an informed decision before any work begins. We do not bill hourly for estate planning engagements; most of our work is handled on a flat-fee basis so you know exactly what you are paying for.

Schedule a Conversation

Call (724) 733-3500 or schedule online. Initial conversations are confidential and conducted by a partner personally.

Frequently Asked Questions