Allen’s Professional and Educational Background makes him a perfect partner for your estate and business planning!
With an LL.M in Taxation and an extensive legal background, together with experience in real estate development, business management, dispute resolution and insurance planning and sales, Allen is uniquely qualified to provide an integrated approach to complex planning issues.
He has over 30 years of legal experience as an estate, business, tax, and real estate attorney. His practice emphasizes family estate planning, including trusts, wills, and durable powers of attorney, and the integration of estate and business planning. Early in his career he was the City Attorney of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and represented developers in real estate ventures.
He has conducted numerous workshops and seminars throughout Northern California, has spoken in Paris at a series of seminars on international estate planning, and in 1993 he led the Quarterly Round Table discussion on Family Limited Partnerships at the Second Annual Meeting of the California Tax Bar in Los Angeles. He currently is a provider with the Department of Insurance and has three courses for which he is the primary instructor.
Allen is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati (Ohio), 1969, with a Bachelor’s Degree in International Affairs. He holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from the University of Denver (Colorado), 1972, studied post-graduate courses in estate planning and taxation, receiving an LL.M in Taxation from the University of Miami (Florida) in 1978.
Professional Association
He is licensed as an attorney in California and Colorado and is a member of the California State Bar Association, the Contra Costa County Bar Association, and the American Bar Association. He is also a member of the California State Trusts and Estates Section, and the California State Bar Taxation Section, and a past member of the Attorneys for Family-Held Enterprises, the Family Firm Institute, the Trusts & Estates Section of the California State Bar Speakers Bureau, and Past President of the Golden Gate Chapter of the Society of Financial Services Professionals.
Professional Background
In addition to the 30, plus, years of practicing law, in the 1990s, Allen represented companies as a real estate consultant and acted as an advanced planning specialist for a financial services company.
Legal and business experience, problem-solving and dispute resolution are often an integral part of an estate or business plan. Allen has successfully applied these techniques to dozens of business and family succession situations. In addition, he has completed a professional mediation training program, with Rosenberg Mediation Training, and utilizes noncoercive facilitated discussions in order to achieve consensus among family members and business partners to facilitate the resolution of friendly disputes.
Sabrina is our office manager. She is also integrally involved in the production and implementation of estate plans and trust administration of estate plans and trust administration.
Maureen is our estate paralegal and coordinates trust administration and probate.
Renita handles filing, works on the “going paperless” project, and is an invaluable assistant to the entire staff.
Our approach to basic estate planning is designed to identify your personal planning needs, explain your options in a clear manner and produce a comprehensive plan in an efficient and cost effective manner:
An initial meeting of approximately an hour-and-a-half is necessary to discuss the client’s specific situation and customize a plan.
The documents are then prepared and mailed to the client for their review.
At a second meeting the plan is explained and, if acceptable, executed.
The documents are then packaged and delivered to the client for safekeeping.
Our approach to complex estate and business succession planning is designed to uncover your core objectives and identify the constraints and secondary objectives, then illustrate the alternative solutions with charts, quantitative analysis, and a sprinkling of humor, to enable you to devise a plan to meet your unique family and business needs.
1) Determine the client’s objectives through active listening and ascertaining the emotional content of the message;
Present alternative solutions in a clear and comprehensible manner;
Facilitate the selection of an appropriate solution; and
Efficiently implement the agreed-upon strategy.
We bring the same approach as basic estate planning, offering competitive prices when the legal, tax and personal issues can be dealt with in a straight forward manner. When dealing with complex matters involving tax, business and family dynamics our process is designed to utilize a team-oriented approach to meet our client’s objectives efficiently.
