Dave is a very skilled estate and tax planning attorney with almost 40 years of experience in the areas of sophisticated estate planning, wealth preservation, insurance and tax planning, and estate administration. For the last several years, he has held the title of National Service Line Leader for Shumaker’s Wealth Strategies Service Line. Dave has been certified as a Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law by the Ohio State Bar Association for over 20 years. He has a national practice with licenses to practice in the States of Ohio, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee, and as a result, he frequently advises clients with respect to changing their state of residency. In Ohio, Dave pioneered the state’s law on the inheritance rights of children born using assisted reproductive technologies by drafting its legislation on that topic.
Dave is passionate about business succession planning. Clients turn to Dave to preserve their businesses and family legacies through multi-generational trust planning and other techniques that minimize federal gift, estate, and generation-skipping transfer taxes. He also provides strategies to minimize state income tax on trusts and estates. In addition, Dave has extensive experience in IRS tax controversies and trust litigation, as well as the drafting and negotiation of prenuptial and postnuptial agreements.
Known for being a great communicator, Dave possesses an uncanny ability to make very complicated concepts understandable so that clients can make intelligent decisions about their plans. In fact, due to his wealth of legal experience, strong judgment, and outstanding discretion, Dave often serves as a sounding board or de facto general counsel for all of a client’s legal needs.
Dave also has extensive experience with charitable gifts and planned giving and counsels clients and many local charities on matters relating to this area of the law. He was instrumental in establishing the Toledo Area Planned Giving Council, which educates all professionals about planned giving, and served as its first president.