Michelle Bergeron Spell

Michelle Bergeron Spell focuses her practice on estate planning, succession planning and trust and estate administration for domestic and foreign individuals. She has extensive experience in multi-generational estate planning and asset protection.

Michelle's clients include high net worth individuals and families for whom she handles such matters as wills, grantor retained interest trusts, generation-skipping trusts, family limited partnerships and living trusts. Michelle has extensive experience in representing business owners and frequently recommends and implements plans to facilitate the transfer of business interests to the next generation, reducing transfer tax costs and minimizing the disruption to the family business.

Michelle has experience in all aspects of estate administration, including the preparation of Federal, New York and New Jersey Estate Tax returns as well as formal and informal accountings.

She is a frequent speaker on estate planning and regularly lectures to professional and industry association audiences on a variety of strategic planning and asset protection topics. Among Michelle's recent speaking engagements are ‘Art and Transfer Tax Planning’ delivered at the Anti-Defamation League's The Next Generation Philanthropy Community event and Artvest's ‘Art as an Investment: The Fundamentals’ where she addressed Art Wealth Transfer and Estate Planning. She also presented for the AAA on the topic ‘What do you mean my personal property is part of my estate?’ as well as the NYSSCPA on the topic of ‘Back to Basics: What should be communicated between the accountant and attorney in a successful estate/trust administration’.

Michelle provides pro bono services for a range of organizations through Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. Specifically, she has worked with a number of nonprofit organizations to help them establish state and federal tax-free status.