Joel S. Luber, Senior Counsel and Chair of the firm’s Wills, Trusts & Estates Group, concentrates his practice on sophisticated estate planning for high net-worth individuals, asset protection planning, estate administration, Orphans’ Court practice, and general corporate and income tax planning.

Joel maintains an active role in counseling clients in commercial transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, shareholder and partnership agreements, employment agreements, non-qualified deferred and equity-based compensation agreements, and real estate transactions, including financing and like-kind exchanges.

Joel lectures at continuing education seminars and writes on unique issues in the context of estate planning, including precise draftsmanship, trust protectors, powers of attorney, powers of appointment, breaking developments arising from newly enacted federal and state legislation, revenue rulings, case law, asset protection planning, and family limited partnerships.

Joel views estate planning as a collaborative undertaking where the client’s best interests are best served by the inclusion of their circle of trusted advisors, including accountants, financial planners, insurance underwriters, trust officers, and other family members and physicians. With course selections dating back to his Wharton School education of a double major in accounting and insurance, and a graduate law degree in taxation from NYU School of Law, Joel is uniquely situated to act as a team leader of all these disciplines and translate the technical terms of tax law into layman terms for clients overwhelmed by such.

Recent planning transactions:

• Irrevocable non-grantor trust in nondomiciliary state of grantor to minimize exposure to high state income tax rates of domiciliary state.
• Sale of nonmarketable securities to a grantor trust in exchange for a promissory note to fund life insurance, guaranteed by beneficiaries.
• Disclaimers to effectuate post-mortem planning to arrive at better overall federal estate tax result necessitated by a significant change in federal tax law after the date of the last testamentary documents.
• S inversion transaction to avoid corporate level and shareholders level income taxes when a change of entity status from corporation to LLC was desired by the client after a recommendation from other advisors.

Joe’s outside interests include tennis, attending professional sporting events and rock concerts, collecting artwork, and visiting his children and grandchildren as they migrate from time to time to different parts of the country.