Deborah Pechet Quinan

Director 

dquinan@rackemann.com

Tel: 617-951-1109

- Philanthropy- Tax- Trusts and Estates

 

Education

Bar and Court Admissions

• Commonwealth of Massachusetts
• United States Tax Court

Practice Focus

Deborah concentrates her practice in the areas of estate planning, tax planning, and the administration of trusts and estates, emphasizing estate and business succession planning for individuals, closely-held business owners, entrepreneurs and corporate executives.  She also focuses on estate planning for retirement assets, international estate planning and charitable giving.  Additionally, Deborah assists clients in coordinating their financial planning needs with their other advisors.  

Notable Experience

Estate Planning

Deborah assists her clients in creating a harmonious intergenerational wealth transfer plan that accomplishes both their tax and personal objectives.  She does so by recommending and implementing techniques designed to minimize or avoid federal and state estate taxes, without compromising her clients’ personal goals.  She incorporates revocable trusts in the core testamentary estate plan, assists clients in designing and implementing annual gift programs, and utilizes more sophisticated trusts such as irrevocable life insurance trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, generation-skipping trusts, as well as family limited partnerships. These techniques are generally designed to remove the appreciation of a client’s assets from their taxable estates and into trusts for the benefit of future generations, thus minimizing the governments share of her clients' estates.  Deborah assists family law counsel in structuring premarital and separation agreements, and assists clients whose children are divorcing, in restructuring their estate plans to minimize the child’s divorcing spouse’s potential claims.  Deborah incorporates a variety of charitable planning techniques into a client’s overall estate plan structure where this is desired.  When a client or a client’s family member passes on, Deborah handles the estate administration that is required, and counsels executors and trustees in this regard.

Deborah works closely with her clients’ other financial advisors to ensure that a well-coordinated estate plan is crafted and then implemented, without jeopardizing the client’s lifetime financial security.  Deborah has received numerous expressions of gratitude from her clients for her continuous efforts to keep the estate planning process moving along, whether through follow-up calls directly to her clients, or to their advisors.  Deborah’s clients value the continuous energy and dedication she brings to the estate planning process, as well as her ability to translate complex topics into understandable language through the use of flowcharts and other explanatory techniques.

Business Succession Planning

For many years Deborah has been working with closely-held business owners to ensure that the value of their business interests will pass to their surviving family members in a manner that will not give rise to disputes with their partners.  In doing this Deborah works with her clients to ensure that funded buy-sell agreements are put into place where appropriate, and that such agreements are properly coordinated with the client’s estate plan. In doing so, she ensures that estate tax and income tax minimization strategies appropriate to each client’s unique situation are considered.  Deborah has a great deal of experience implementing Charitable Remainder Trusts, Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts, Generation-Skipping Trusts, and other techniques of interest to clients who wish to shift highly appreciating assets to their children or trusts for their children, at the lowest possible estate and gift tax cost allowed  under current law.

International Estate Planning

Deborah has a great deal of experience addressing the unique needs of clients who reside in the United States but are not citizens of this country, and of clients who are U. S. citizens but reside abroad.  In this context she utilizes Qualified Domestic Trusts for her married clients who have such a need.  In addition, Deborah has experience in planning for clients prior to their immigration to this country. 

Background

Joined the firm in 2002

Prior Affiliations

• National Director of Estate & Financial Planning Services at State Street Corporation in State Street Global Advisors’ Private Asset Management division
• New England Area Director of Estate and Business Succession Planning for Ernst & Young;  Associate Director of the Ernst & Young Center for Family Wealth Planning
• Associate attorney, Mirick, O'Connell, DeMallie & Lougee

Community Service Activities

The Essex County Community Foundation, Danvers, Massachusetts

• Board of Trustees
• Executive Committee
• Immediate Past Chair of Planned Giving Committee

Temple Ner Tamid, Peabody, Massachusetts,

• Board of Trustees
• Planned Giving Committee
• Religious School Committee
• Investment Committee
• Interfaith Outreach Committee 

Professional Activities

• American Bar Association
• Massachusetts Bar Association
• Boston Bar Association
• Boston Estate Planning Council
• Boston Probate and Estate Planning Forum
• Past Co-Chair of the Boston Bar Association’s Trusts & Estates Section
• Past Co-Chair of the Boston Bar Association’s Estate Planning Committee
• Massachusetts Uniform Trust Code Committee
• Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education’s Estate Planning Curriculum Committee
• Bentley College Financial and Tax Planning Program, Board of Advisors
• Elected one of Boston’s Top Ten Lawyers in the Boston Women’s Business Journal 2005 Readers’ Poll
• Elected a Massachusetts Super Lawyer, 2005-2006
• Chosen as one of the Top 100 Lawyers in the Country by Worth Magazine, December, 2006
• Quoted in Bloomberg Wealth Manager magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Personal Finance magazine, Money magazine, American Banker, and The Boston Business Journal

Publications

Over 150 speaking engagements from 1985 through the present, on various tax and estate planning topics to lay, charitable and professional audiences, including radio, television, and satellite television appearances.

Suffolk Transnational Law Journal, Volume IX, number 1, Spring, 1985,  Case Comment:  Immigration - Border Searches  United States v. Mosquera-Ramirez.

Best of MCLE Journal, May, 1995; Special Purpose Trusts.

Boston Business Journal Estate & Retirement Planning Supplement, October, 2001; Section 529 Plans: What You Need to Know. 

MCLE Drafting Irrevocable Trusts in Massachusetts, Contributing Author

Numerous technical outlines published in MCLE seminar books for panels Deborah lectured on.