white cirrus clouds in the sky

Practice Areas

The sky above the Pacific Northwest is always changing. The same is true of the legal climate impacting our personal lives and businesses. We help clients adapt to, and prepare for, the changing conditions.

Cirrus clouds can be seen in fair weather.

Learn more about our Practice Areas

Tax considerations are ever present in our personal and professional decision making. Those decisions are even more complex as a result of the constantly changing tax climate.

CIRRUS LAW helps individuals, and the businesses they own, minimize federal and state taxes no matter the issue.

Regardless of how you acquire it, managing wealth properly requires a plan to distribute it at death.

CIRRUS LAW guides clients through the complex world of estate, gift and charitable planning to develop, implement and maintain a thoughtful and customized design for passing wealth.

Losing a loved one can bring storm clouds into our lives without notice.

CIRRUS LAW assists Personal Representatives and Trustees to administer and distribute the estate (or trust) after death to ensure compliance with the many applicable state and federal laws and to complete the process as efficiently as possible. The passing of one person can impact many people, so we do our best to help all those impacted get to fair weather.

Disputes often arise during the distribution or administration of an estate or a trust and with respect to the actions of agents under powers of attorney.

Some disputes can be addressed effectively using a cooperative process under Washington’s Trust and Estate Dispute Resolution Act, while others demand a more adversarial and strategic approach. The attorneys at CIRRUS LAW have successfully handled numerous trust and estate disputes, often with deep complexities and significant assets at stake. We would be glad to evaluate your case and to determine whether it would be a good fit for our firm.

Closely-held and family-owned businesses have unique legal needs that require creative and multi-disciplinary legal advice throughout the business cycle.

CIRRUS LAW has the experience to provide tailored and cost-effective solutions to a wide range of issues and challenges that arise in the life of a private business, including entity formation, annual governance, contracts, asset and stock sales / purchases, executive compensation, tax, nondisclosure agreements, non-compete agreements, employment policy handbooks, business succession and other day to day operational issues.

Life insurance is a sophisticated financial asset used by both individuals and businesses to plan for liquidity when it is needed the most.

Life insurance is also subject to its own tax rules that govern purchases by employers (when the employee is insured), exchanges, sales, transfers and other restructuring. CIRRUS LAW has the capability to help clients in every facet of life insurance transactions, including consulting on the design of policies, the transfer, sale and restructuring of policies and estate planning techniques involving policies.

Businesses are constantly fighting a war to attract and retain talent.

CIRRUS LAW has deep experience in designing and drafting executive benefit and compensation arrangements for corporations and partnerships, including nonqualified deferred compensation plans under IRC Section 409A, split-dollar life insurance arrangements, profits interests and other profit sharing arrangements. We provide guidance on the administration, funding (including life insurance as an informal funding vehicle or liability hedge), termination and correction of documentary and operational compliance issues of these plans.