Estate Planning & Asset Protection

Probate & After-Death Administration

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General Counsel

About GMFD

Values

Within the firm, we strive for implement certain values in dealing with our clients, colleagues and friends. We welcome the association of those who share these values:

1. Importance of the Family Unit. The power that makes this country strong and vibrant is the American family with its independence, self-sufficiency, and pride; its right to be different and unique; and its systems for passing wealth, high standards, ethics, family culture and traditions from one generation to another.
2. Internal Harmony Within the Business Unit. Family businesses, and businesses operated like an extended family, with genuine warmth and respect among executives and employees, will prevail and succeed.
3. Holistic Approach to Legal Planning. Legal planning must be "holistic," must have a design where the people and the legal structures fit comfortably together. We coordinate the businesses with the family and its multi-generations so they will interact smoothly, efficiently and profitably like the organs of the human body.
4. Preventive Law. Most taxes, lawsuits and unpleasant legal proceedings can be prevented by comprehensive and imaginative preventive law planning and counseling.
5. Resolving Disputes Without Lawsuits. Disputes are normal in human endeavors. Our legal system for resolving them is archaic. We may learn how to settle disputes without lawsuits or ill will by understanding the techniques of:
   1. Positive, harmonious attitudes with ourselves.
   2. Clearer communications.
   3. Fair and frank notice.
   4. Negotiation.
   5. Mediation.
   6. Arbitration.
6. Eliminate or Minimize the Effect of "Confiscatory" Taxes. Any income, gift, or estate tax greater than an average of 20% is confiscatory and begins to "destroy the goose that lays the golden eggs." Achieve tax avoidance wherever possible so that overall tax payments to the government are less than 20% of income and less than 20% of the estate.
7. Treat Clients the Same as Family Members and Ourselves. Clients will be treated with the same "heart," concern and understanding we would give to a family member or want to receive ourselves.
8. Relate to the Client as a Professional and a Friend. The relationship of an attorney with his clients can be both that of a professional and a friend.
9. Explain Legal Complexities and Consequences in Layman's Terms. An attorney has the duty to explain complex legal concepts in words a lay person can easily understand and to explain the legal consequences of every plan or documents ­ the "up" side and the "down" side.
10. Work Closely With Clients' Other Professional Advisors. The best way to legally structure a family or business is to involve, train, and coordinate with other professionals ­ bankers, accountants, insurance professionals, financial planners and investment advisors.
11. Refer Clients to the Best and Most Appropriate Specialist. Clients must be referred to the best attorney specialist for a particular legal problem whether the attorney specialist is within or outside the firm.
12. Duty to Improve the Community and Legal Profession. We believe it is an attorney's duty to become involved in making a better community and a better legal profession.