Paul E. Van Horn

Paul advises high net worth individuals on estate planning, helping them to establish plans that implement their unique wishes and minimize income, gift, estate, and generation-skipping transfer taxes, all while avoiding unnecessary complexity. His work includes not only the preparation of wills and revocable trust agreements to govern a client’s estate at death, but also lifetime planning in order to provide for special circumstances, minimize the eventual transfer tax burden, or provide current benefits to descendants or other beneficiaries in a tax-efficient manner.

Paul prepares a wide range of trust agreements (e.g., SLATs, GRATs, QPRTs, CRTs, and SNTs) and helps clients with partnership agreements and LLC operating agreements. He also advises clients on meeting their philanthropic goals, including the use of donor advised funds, split-interest charitable trusts, and the creation of private foundations. Paul prepares federal and New York estate tax returns and federal gift tax returns. He advises fiduciaries on the administration of trusts and estates, including fiduciary duties, responsibilities, elections, and fiduciary income tax returns.

Paul regularly represents clients in matters before the IRS and New York State Department of Taxation and Finance in connection with the audit of gift and estate tax returns, and in Surrogate’s Court regarding trust and estate matters.

As an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law, where he has taught for many years in the graduate tax program, Paul is adept at taking complicated tax rules and regimes and making them understandable to non-experts. He previously taught “Income Taxation of Trusts & Estates” for many years and is currently teaching “Estate Planning.”