Amalia Todryk

Trusted advisor to affluent families, successful business owners and corporate executives 

Amalia is a trust and estate lawyer who advises wealthy families, owners and operators of closely held/family businesses, executives of large private and public companies, professionals and trustees. She focuses on:

• Estate and retirement planning
• Business succession planning
• Estate and trust administration, including probate
• Leveraged gift techniques
• Federal and state tax return preparation
• Charitable planning and giving

Clients appreciate Amalia’s responsiveness, discretion and practical approach. She is a trusted advisor to her clients, their families and businesses. Amalia strives to provide them with guidance and peace of mind during what often involves their most difficult decisions and life events. One of Amalia's favorite aspects of her work is truly getting to know her clients, their values, asset composition and businesses so she can work with them to develop creative and custom estate and business succession plans. Amalia’s ability to connect with her clients and their families allows her to navigate multigenerational and interfamily dynamics in a thoughtful and caring manner. The majority of Amalia’s new clients are from referrals by existing clients and their advisors.

Amalia is the Wisconsin chair of the firm's Estate, Trust & Wealth Preservation Practice Group.

• Creating tax-efficient estate plans and preparing wills, trusts, marital agreements and powers of attorney to implement them.
• Counseling on succession planning for owners of family and closely held businesses, advising on ownership structures designed to facilitate gift and estate planning transfers, and developing pre-sale tax strategies for business owners.
• Implementing sophisticated gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer tax planning techniques to minimize the impact of taxes on intergenerational transfers of wealth.
• Administering estates and trusts and advising personal representatives and trustees on fiduciary duties, income tax and accounting matters.
• Preparing and defending on audit federal and state estate tax, gift tax and fiduciary income tax returns.
• Acting as trustee of irrevocable trusts.
• Advising and implementing charitable planning techniques.

• Helped scores of families structure personal assets and businesses to achieve personal and financial goals and minimize taxes.
• Developed and implemented gifting programs to transfer S Corporation stock via annual exclusion gifts, installment sales to intentionally “defective” grantor trusts and grantor retained annuity trusts in order to reduce estate tax liability. Gifting programs have ranged in size from $15 million to hundreds of millions of dollars.
• Worked with businesses with net worths of $10 million to over $1 billion, the ownership of which is held across multiple generations. Developed and implemented sophisticated leveraged gifting programs for both first- and second-generation owners to transfer significant ownership interests in business to the next generation to reduce estate tax exposure while maintaining post-retirement income for the senior generations and helping to ensure the future viability of the business.
• Implemented multiple dynasty trusts to control family wealth distribution, including unique assets, for future generations.
• Successfully represented numerous personal representatives and trustees in IRS audits of complex, high-dollar estate tax returns.
• Negotiated and prepared complex gift agreements for lifetime and post-death charitable gifts.