Overview
Gunster advises ultra-high-net-worth individuals, multigenerational families, family offices, fiduciaries, and closely held business owners on complex cross-border tax, estate, and succession planning matters.
Our lawyers counsel clients whose families, assets, and businesses span multiple jurisdictions, including on pre-immigration and expatriation planning, international trust and estate structures, inbound U.S. investments, cross-border business transactions, and family-office governance. We coordinate U.S. legal and tax planning with foreign counsel, accountants, fiduciaries, and investment professionals to develop and deploy integrated strategies across jurisdictions.
What Sets Gunster Apart
We approach each engagement by examining the client’s global ownership structure as a whole, including trusts, entities, operating businesses, investments, family relationships, and relevant jurisdictions.
Working with advisors worldwide, Gunster devises and coordinates integrated global legal, wealth preservation, and tax strategies. We help families assemble and coordinate their global advisory teams, identifying and working alongside foreign counsel, accountants, fiduciaries, and investment professionals.
For many families, our role continues well beyond a particular transaction or planning project. We provide ongoing counsel as ownership, family circumstances, investment structures, and jurisdictions change over time. Knowing clients seek continuity, sophistication, and trusted oversight, our team is strategically composed of next-generation counsel equipped with exceptional depth and experience to foster decades of dedicated partnership.
Core Services
Gunster's International Private Client Services team operates as a fully integrated advisory group with private wealth, tax, corporate, real estate, immigration, and fiduciary capabilities, developing coordinated strategies for families whose assets, businesses, and family members span multiple countries.
- Designing and implementing multigenerational wealth transfer strategies for multinational families
- Developing and implementing tax-efficient succession mechanisms for multinational families using coordinated trust, fiduciary, and international holding company structures
- Advising on international trust and fiduciary arrangements designed to support private and tax-efficient succession
- Structuring multinational holding company frameworks to centralize ownership and governance
- Advising on cross-border probate, fiduciary administration, and trust oversight
Our lawyers combine U.S. international tax experience with close coordination among foreign counsel and other advisors in jurisdictions where our clients live, invest, and conduct business. Our services include:
- Advising on complex cross-border income, estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer tax issues
- Advising on U.S. tax exposure for foreign trusts, foreign corporations, and hybrid entities
- Coordinating with foreign counsel and accountants to align global reporting and compliance
- Structuring international acquisitions and dispositions of U.S. companies
- Advising U.S. persons with ownership of foreign corporations, partnerships, trusts, and investment structures
- Structuring cross-border ownership and investment arrangements to address U.S. income, transfer-tax, and reporting consequences
- Analyzing tax treaties and withholding and entity classification issues arising from multinational ownership structures
- Pre-residency planning for non-U.S. clients relocating to the United States
- Structuring assets prior to U.S. tax residency with the goal of mitigating future tax exposure
- Advising U.S. persons on expatriation planning and exit tax considerations
- Coordinating immigration, tax, and wealth planning to support globally mobile families
- Advising non-U.S. families on U.S. real estate acquisitions and other inbound investments
- Structuring U.S. investment vehicles to address tax efficiency, reporting, and asset protection
- Coordinating cross-border M&A transactions involving U.S. operating businesses
- Establishing and structuring international single-family offices
- Advising boards, committees, and management on governance frameworks across multiple jurisdictions
- Formalizing tax-efficient ownership and operational structures
- Assembling and coordinating global advisory teams
- Identifying and working alongside trusted foreign counsel, accountants, fiduciaries, and investment professionals worldwide
Our work for clients often extends well beyond planning. We regularly:
- Where appropriate, and with required disclosures, serve as trustees, executors, personal representatives, and fiduciary advisors
- Provide independent oversight and strategic coordination among a family’s legal, tax, and fiduciary advisors
- Coordinate international legal, tax, and investment professionals to help align with family objectives
