Chad W. Makuch

Experience

Individuals and Families 

• Represents high-net-worth individuals and families in estate planning matters and advises them with their testamentary planning (wills and revocable trusts), lifetime planning and gifting, business succession planning, and charitable giving. 
• Meets clients' objectives by employing vehicles such as installment sales, dynasty trusts, insurance trusts, grantor trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, family limited partnerships and limited liability companies. 
• Transfers assets while minimizing or eliminating costly gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer taxes. In several such matters, designed estate plans that preserved hundreds of thousands and, in some cases, millions of dollars for the benefit of his clients' families and charities (which otherwise would have been paid in transfer taxes).
• Designs estate plans to protect his clients' assets from future creditors' claims and to maintain his clients' privacy where the law might otherwise make his clients' concerns a matter of public record.

Trusts and Estates 

• Represents trustees and executors, whether individuals or institutions, in the administration of large trusts and estates. 
• Guides clients through the formal and often complex process of preparing estate tax returns, inventories, accountings, fiduciary tax reports and more. 
• Regularly fields questions regarding fiduciary duties and responsibilities under multimillion- and multibillion-dollar trusts and the proper investment of those assets. 
• Provides litigation and pre-litigation support to BakerHostetler’s probate and fiduciary litigation practice. By gaining and formalizing consensus under private settlement agreements or declaratory judgment actions, helps clients avoid litigation or, where litigation becomes unavoidable, provides support to litigators.

Public Charities, Private Foundations and Other Exempt Organizations 

• Represents public charities, private family foundations, hospitals, health plans and healthcare organizations with respect to their tax exemptions. Brings his experience with tax-exempt organization matters to his work with clients, and uses it to help them with applications for tax-exempt status recognition, unrelated business income taxes, restricted gift issues, charitable giving requirements, fundraising and more general counseling of exempt organizations in their day-to-day operations.

Memberships

• American Bar Association 
• Ohio State Bar Association 
• Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association 
• Tax Club of Cleveland 
• Estate Planning Counsel of Cleveland (2012 to present)
  • Programming Committee (2013 to 2014)
• Cleveland's Annual Tax Institute: Executive Committee (2011, 2012)

Community

• University Hospitals
  • Diamond Advisory Group (2012 to present)
  • Ride the Rainbow Gala: Planning Committee (2014)
• A Kid Again: Volunteer member of a charity striving to foster hope, happiness and healing for families raising kids with life-threatening illnesses (2013 to present)
• Princeton Association of Northern Ohio (2009 to present)
• St. Joseph Church of Strongsville, Ohio (2009 to present)