Barry L. Small

Partner

  • Barry L. Small
  • Phone: +1 215 979 1771

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  • Duane Morris LLP
    30 South 17th Street
    Philadelphia, PA 19103-4196
    USA

Barry L. Small practices in the area of wealth planning. Mr. Small has experience in structuring wills and trusts that adapt to client circumstances, developing programs for making gifts in a tax-efficient manner, and analyzing and recommending alternate methods of transferring wealth to family members through the use of insurance, employment benefits, and other assets, as well as in representing clients before the Internal Revenue Service and other tax authorities and in dealing with a variety of other estate matters.

Mr. Small is a member of the Education Committee of the Probate and Trust Law Section of the Philadelphia Bar Association. Admitted to practice in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, he is a 1996 graduate of Harvard Law School and a graduate of the University of Delaware.

Areas of Practice

  • Wealth Planning
  • Estates and Asset Planning

Representative Matters

  • Counsel to individual client who desired to bequeath stock options to charities but was concerned about potential adverse income tax consequences to his estate. Obtained precedent-setting ruling from the Internal Revenue Service that exercise of stock options by charities would impose no income liability on the client, his estate or his heirs.

  • Counsel to individual client who desired to make gifts to children in a tax-efficient manner. Analyzed and developed a program of creating "grantor retained annuity trusts" to which client makes gifts each year.

  • Counsel to individual client with respect to analyzing and, ultimately, safeguarding a large number of insurance policies benefiting client's family that had been put in jeopardy by recent changes in the law.

  • Counsel to individual client in connection with the sale of assets to a trust for client's descendants in order to accomplish client's objectives of transferring wealth to descendants in a tax-efficient manner.

  • Counsel to individual client in connection with IRS examination of gifts made of interests in a family limited partnership to a number of family members. Obtained settlement with the IRS which was considerably more favorable to the client than the IRS' public stance and the IRS' original claim against the client.

  • Counsel to family members who owned policies of insurance on each other's lives, but desired to "swap" policies so that each owned the policies on his own life. Numerous tax issues were researched and coordinated to make this transaction.

Admissions

  • New Jersey
  • Pennsylvania
  • U.S. Tax Court

Education

  • Harvard Law School, J.D., 1996

Experience

  • Duane Morris LLP
    - Partner, 2005-present
    - Associate, 1996-2004

Civic and Charitable Activities

  • Member of the Education Committee of the Probate and Trust Law Section of the Philadelphia Bar Association
  • Philadelphia Volunteers for the Indigent Program (VIP)