Andy Gelman is an attorney in Holland & Knight's Chicago office. He concentrates his practice in estate planning and estate and trust administration and controversies and is the immediate past chair of the firm's Illinois Private Wealth Services Practice Group. He counsels individuals, executives and business owners on the use of wills and insurance and inter vivos or living trusts and powers of attorney for property and health care in their estate planning. Often his advice is in the area of federal and state estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer taxation, asset planning and various types of property transfers and rearrangements such as grantor retained annuity trusts, family limited partnerships, qualified personal residence trusts, and charitable trusts and foundations. Mr. Gelman is a certified mediator for the Court-Annexed Mediation Program of the Probate Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County.
Mr. Gelman has a further concentration in the area of legal disability and the use of trusts to protect disabled adults and minors. He has been a lecturer on the topic of supplemental needs trusts for the learning disabled or mentally impaired child. He devotes a portion of his practice to probate proceedings as they relate to disabled adults. Such proceedings include the adjudication of incompetency, termination of such adjudication, and financial planning and health care for a ward. Mr. Gelman served as the court appointed guardian ad litem in the Greenspan case, which was the first case in Illinois in which a Court allowed the withdrawal of life support from a terminally ill individual.
Mr. Gelman has represented numerous corporate and individual fiduciaries and beneficiaries of estates and trusts in contested matters. He is knowledgeable in all aspects of decedents’ estates and minors’ estates and trusts in probate and chancery, including will contests, trust constructions, citation proceedings, claims, awards, statutory rights, and rights of heirs, legatees and beneficiaries. He counsels both corporate and individual fiduciaries with respect to federal and state estate tax, federal and state fiduciary income tax and post mortem tax planning in administration of estates and trusts.
Mr. Gelman's practice also includes work in premarital matters, adoptions (related, agency, and private placements), as well as real estate transactions, both personal and commercial.
