William R. Franzen

Counsel

William believes in the importance of client service, which is particularly important in representing clients on their personal estate and tax planning matters.

William Franzen Portrait

Bill’s strong commitment to personalized service is essential to his success in helping clients navigate delicate matters, including estate and tax planning, wealth preservation, and family business succession and tax strategies.

Clients look to Bill for his experience in counseling clients on the formation, structure, and control of family businesses. In addition, he assists with complex probate estate and trust administration, executive compensation planning, and charitable organization formation and administration matters.

Bill has written extensively on trust and estate planning issues for Illinois State Bar Association, Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education, and American Bar Association publications. He has also given numerous presentations to family offices, investment advisers, and business groups to help them understand family business succession planning, as well as other current estate and tax planning matters.

Client Work

  • Counsels three generations of a prominent family in their estate and tax-planning matters. Also advises in the succession and tax-planning matters of their privately held, multinational corporation.
  • Led effort on behalf of client in the reorganization of a substantial family corporation into voting and nonvoting shares, and subsequent gifting opportunities for those shares and the sale of the corporation to a third party.
  • Effectively advised client in the creation of multiple grantor-retained annuity trusts (GRATs) and subsequent transactions to “lock-in” the tax benefits of those trusts, and to “re-GRAT” the annuity payments received by the client to maximize the tax efficiency of those trusts.
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Boards, Memberships & Certifications

Professional Memberships

  • American Bar Association, Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section
  • The Chicago Community Trust, Young Professional Advisory Committee
  • DuPage County Bar Association
  • Illinois State Bar Association

Professional Certifications

  • Certified Public Accountant, State of Illinois

Professional Activities

Bill was a guest lecturer on Income Taxation of Trusts and Estates at Northwestern University School of Law (2012).

Bill has participated in several volunteer income tax preparation programs.

Publications, Presentations & Recognitions

Publications

  • “Discretionary Distributions,” (co-author) Illinois Trust Administration, Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education (IICLE), 1999 Edition, 2005/2008 Supplements, 2014 Edition, 2019 Edition, and 2023 Edition
  • “Tax Aspects of Estate, Trust and Guardianship Litigation,” (co-author) Illinois Estate Trust and Guardianship Litigation, Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education (IICLE), 2002 Edition and 2008 Supplement
  • “Federal Estate and Gift Tax Procedures,” (co-author) Illinois Estate Administration, Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education (IICLE), 1999 Edition
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Presentations

  • “Estate and Tax Planning” presented at the CFO Meeting of the Copier Dealers Association (Jun. 2010)
  • “Civil Unions in Illinois: Love, Life, Death, Taxes and Philanthropy” (Oct. 2011)

Recognitions

  • Probate & Property Excellence in Writing Award: Best Overall Article Probate & Trust, American Bar Association (1999)

Insights