Sean Colonna Email and Phone Number

I am an attorney in Clark Hill's Birmingham office, in the Tax and Estate Planning Group. I assist clients in preparing general estate planning documents such as wills, revocable trusts, and powers of attorney. In addition, a vast amount of my practice is devoted to complex planning for high net worth individuals through the use of irrevocable trusts, gifts, insurance and grantor trusts, ILITs, GRATs and SLATs for transfer tax planning and philanthropic purposes.Many of my clients consist of entrepreneurs and owners of closely held companies. I have tailored my practice to align clients' personal estate planning documents with business succession and management continuity plans for a seamless transfer in the event of death or incapacity. I also commit a portion of my practice for post-death administration of estates and trusts, which includes administration of dynasty trusts, assisting fiduciaries to administer trusts in the most tax advantageous ways, making distributions to beneficiaries, and preparing fiduciary, estate, and gift and generation-skipping tax returns.In the area of probate and related litigation, I have handled matters involving undue influence, mental capacity and breach of fiduciary duty in estate, trust, guardianship and conservatorship contests.Some of my representative client work includes:- Preparing various complex irrevocable trusts pursuant to divorce decree involving over $200 million in assets. - Successfully appealed a Macomb County Probate Court ruling, where in a rare published opinion from the Michigan Court of Appeals, the appellate court reversed the probate court's decision to appoint a conservator over my client’s objections.- I routinely prepare complex estate planning for professionals, including business owners, attorneys, doctors, and those with special needs children.- I have administered complex trusts with combined value of assets exceeding $3 billion, which also involved unique assets such as charitable pledges, endowment funds, nonprofit foundations, intellectual property, crypto currency and valuable art.- I advised major supplier workaround strategies regarding exceptions to the China tariffs, saving millions in import taxes.