Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP

Firm Overview: 

Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP (Bradley) combines skilled legal counsel with exceptional client service and unwavering integrity to assist a diverse range of corporate and individual clients in achieving their business goals. With offices in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and the District of Columbia, the firm’s more than 600 lawyers represent regional, national and international clients in various industries, including banking and financial services, construction, energy, healthcare, life sciences, manufacturing, real estate, and technology, among many others.

Bradley is top ranked in Chambers High Net Worth 2023 guide, as well as four partners, in the area of Private Wealth Law in Alabama. The four Birmingham-based partners ranked in the 2023 guide are members of Bradley's Trusts and Estates and Tax practice groups:

• Scott E. Adams
• Nancy Williams Ball
• Bradley W. Lard
• Ralph H. Yeilding

Bradley's Trusts and Estates Practice Group provide sound and creative advice to individuals and families in structuring estate plans to meet their needs. The team guides clients through the maze of estate tax rules to develop estate plans that meet both their tax and non-tax goals. Bradley represents an array of clients, including business executives, owners of closely held businesses, highly compensated employees and many other individuals and families with a net worth of anywhere from zero to millions. The firm's attorneys not only discuss wills (or living trusts), they also provide counsel on a wide range of tax and non-tax issues:

• Business succession planning, including buy-sell agreements
• Asset protection planning, including the use of asset protection trusts
• Retirement benefit planning
• Beneficiary designation planning
• Techniques to reduce the value of client's estate, including irrevocable trusts, gifting programs, and qualified personal residence trusts
• Techniques to freeze the value of a client's estate, such as grantor retained annuity trusts and sales to intentionally defective grantor trusts
• Charitable giving techniques, such as charitable remainder trusts that may provide our clients with income, estate and gift tax benefits
• Advance healthcare plans and/or living wills

Bradley’s Tax Practice Group offers a broad range of services covering all aspects of federal, state, and local taxation laws for individuals and businesses. The firm's tax attorneys serve a diverse client base that includes individuals, privately held businesses, regional, national, and international publicly held companies, corporate and individual fiduciaries, and nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations. Their attorneys have extensive experience in:

• Corporate and partnership tax representation
• Federal tax planning and structuring
• Business entity formation
• State and local tax
• Trust and estate taxation
• Tax controversy resolution
• Tax-exempt organizations

More than half of the partners in the Tax Practice Group are elected Fellows in either the American College of Tax Counsel or the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, both of which are elite groups of nationally recognized tax or trust and estate attorneys.