Debra G. Kosakoff’s practice encompasses all aspects of estate planning, estate and trust administration and Surrogate's Court Practice. For more than 25 years, she has worked with clients to help achieve their testamentary and donative goals while minimizing estate, gift, income and generation-skipping transfer taxes. She develops sophisticated estate plans through the use of wills, revocable trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, insurance trusts, charitable lead and remainder trusts, limited liability companies, and generation-skipping techniques. For clients with non-citizen spouses, she drafts complex qualified domestic trusts. Of particular concern to many of Debra's clients are the income and estate tax ramifications of their retirement assets (IRAs and qualified plans) and she creates estate plans that accommodate the highly technical requirements of these assets. She also negotiates and drafts pre- and post-nuptial agreements, and helps clients prepare for possible incapacity through powers of attorney, health care proxies, living wills and supplemental needs trusts.
Debra administers estates, trusts, charitable trusts and private foundations, focusing on both the tax aspects and the fiduciaries' non-tax responsibilities. As part of estate administration, she counsels clients with regard to post-mortem estate planning, including tax elections and disclaimers. She handles estate, gift and fiduciary income tax audits and controversies with the IRS on related issues. Debra also handles Surrogate's Court proceedings, including probate, administration, construction, accounting and guardianship proceedings.
She received a B.S. from Cornell University and her J.D. cum laude from Brooklyn Law School, where she was Senior Editor of the Law Review.
Debra G. Kosakoff
