Burlington, MA • Estate Planning Attorney
Protect What Burlington Has Built.
Burlington families and business owners have worked hard to build something real, careers, businesses, homes, retirement savings. A well-crafted estate plan makes sure that work isn’t undone by taxes, long-term care costs, or a plan that was never built to last. Our Woburn office is minutes away.
Common estate planning gaps
Does Your Plan Cover All of This?
Most Burlington families have some estate planning in place. The real question is whether it’s actually protecting them. Here’s what we see missing most often.
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Protection against Massachusetts estate taxes, MA taxes estates over $2M, and home values, retirement accounts, and life insurance all count toward that threshold.
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Long-term care asset protection, At $132K/yr, a nursing home can drain a lifetime of savings in just a few years. Without the right trust, even a will won’t protect you.
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A plan updated in the last 3–5 years, Tax laws, family situations, and assets change constantly. An outdated plan can be worse than no plan at all.
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Business succession strategy, Business owners need more than a will. Without succession planning, both your business value and personal assets may be at risk simultaneously.
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Probate avoidance for your heirs, Massachusetts probate can stretch 1–2 years and becomes public record. A properly funded trust avoids it entirely.
If Any of These Are Missing, It’s Time to Call.
A free 15-minute consult call with our intake coordinator is all it takes to find out exactly where your plan stands, and what it’s missing. No pressure. No obligation.
📞 Call (978) 657-7437 📅 Book a Free Consult Call“A plan that sits in a drawer isn’t a plan — it’s a false sense of security. Burlington families have too much at stake for that.”— Michael Monteforte, Jr., Attorney & CEO
What we do for Burlington families
Comprehensive Estate Planning Services
We specialize exclusively in estate planning, elder law, and wealth preservation. That focus means Burlington families get an attorney who does this every day, not a generalist doing their best.
Wills, Trusts & Comprehensive Estate Plans
We build estate plans that go beyond documents, coordinated strategies that actually protect your family when it counts. Every plan is tailored to your assets, your family, and your goals.
- Last will & testament
- Revocable living trusts
- Irrevocable trusts for asset protection
- Healthcare proxies & HIPAA authorizations
- Durable powers of attorney
Elder Law & Long-Term Care Planning
Massachusetts nursing home costs average $132,000 per year. Elder law planning protects your home, savings, and assets, even if long-term care becomes necessary. We help Burlington families plan ahead before a crisis forces their hand.
- MassHealth (Medicaid) planning & applications
- Irrevocable Medicaid Asset Protection Trusts
- Long-term care asset protection
- Guardianship & conservatorship
- Veterans benefits planning (VA-accredited)
Wealth Preservation & Estate Tax Planning
Massachusetts taxes estates over $2 million, and for many Burlington families, that threshold is closer than they think. We build strategies to minimize taxes and maximize what passes to the next generation.
- Massachusetts estate tax planning
- 20/20 Hindsight Trust™, Monteforte Law exclusive
- Irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs)
- Retirement & investment account protection
- Charitable giving & legacy planning
Probate & Estate Administration
Massachusetts probate can take 1–2 years and becomes public record. We help families avoid it entirely through proper trust planning, and guide those who must navigate it through every step.
- Probate court representation
- Estate administration & asset transfer
- Probate avoidance through trust funding
- Out-of-state property planning
Burlington Estates Are Probated in Woburn — Minutes From Our Office
A Burlington estate is not administered in Burlington. It goes to the Middlesex Probate and Family Court at 10-U Commerce Way in Woburn, the same city we work in. Burlington was added to that court’s service area on 1 March 2023, joining seventeen other Middlesex communities.
Massachusetts offers more than one route through it, and which route an estate takes matters a great deal. Informal probate is faster and largely administrative. Formal probate involves a judge, and an estate lands there when the will is unclear, when an heir cannot be located, when someone objects, or when the paperwork does not satisfy the court. The difference between the two is frequently decided by how carefully the documents were drafted years earlier.
Or the estate can skip the question entirely. Assets held in a properly funded trust never enter probate in either form, so there is no route to choose and no judge to satisfy. See how Massachusetts probate works.
For a Lot of Burlington Families, the Biggest Asset Is the 401(k)
Along the Route 128 corridor there are plenty of households with more in retirement accounts than in the house. Those accounts do not pass under your will. They pass by beneficiary designation, and the rules governing what happens after that changed in a way most people have never been told about.
The ten-year rule
For deaths after 2019, most non-spouse beneficiaries have to empty an inherited retirement account within ten years. The old approach, where a child stretched distributions across their own lifetime, is gone for most families.
A narrower group can still stretch it: a surviving spouse, a minor child of the account owner, a beneficiary who is disabled or chronically ill, and anyone not more than ten years younger than the owner. Everybody else is on the ten-year clock. And where the owner had already begun taking required minimum distributions, annual distributions may be required during those ten years as well.
Why that matters more than it sounds
Ten years is not the problem. The timing is. A child inheriting a substantial 401(k) is usually in their forties or fifties, their highest-earning years, and the money arrives on top of a salary that is already taxed at the highest rate they will ever pay. A large account can lose a meaningful share of itself to income tax that careful sequencing would have reduced.
What we actually look at. Whether your beneficiary designations still match the plan you think you have. Whether the ten-year exposure can be spread or reduced while you are alive. And whether a trust belongs in the chain at all, sometimes it does, and often it does not, because a trust named as beneficiary without these rules in mind can accelerate the tax rather than defer it. That is a conversation, not a product.
Asset protection and wealth preservation • Massachusetts estate tax calculator • Long-term care cost calculator
For Burlington business owners & executives
Your Business Is Part of Your Estate. Is It Protected?
Burlington’s Route 128 corridor is home to executives, entrepreneurs, and business owners who have built real value, both in their companies and in their personal lives. Without a business succession plan that’s integrated with your estate plan, all of that value is at risk.
At Monteforte Law, we help Burlington business owners make sure their estate plan covers every dimension of what they’ve built, not just personal assets, but the business itself, key relationships, and what happens next.
📞 Talk to an Attorney TodayBusiness Succession Planning
Plan who takes over, when, and how, so your business continues and your family is protected, no matter what happens to you.
Buy-Sell Agreement Coordination
Your buy-sell agreement needs to align with your estate plan. We make sure both are working together, not creating conflicts down the road.
Business Owner Asset Protection
Separate your business liabilities from personal assets with the right legal structure, built before a problem arises, not after.
Family & Key Person Transition Planning
Whether you’re passing the business to family or a partner, we build a plan for a smooth, tax-efficient transition everyone can count on.
Burlington Residents Ask Us…
My biggest asset is my 401(k), not my house. Does that change the plan?
It changes where the work is. Retirement accounts pass by beneficiary designation, not under your will, so a beautifully drafted will has no effect on them at all. The planning that matters for a large account is getting the designations right, understanding the ten-year rule your beneficiaries will face, and deciding whether anything can usefully be done while you are alive.
Should I name my trust as the beneficiary of my retirement account?
Sometimes, and often not. A trust can make sense where a beneficiary is young, has creditor or divorce exposure, or receives means-tested benefits. But a trust named as beneficiary without the retirement account rules in mind can pull the income forward and increase the tax rather than defer it. It depends entirely on how the trust is drafted and who the beneficiaries are, so it is not a question that has one right answer.
Where would a Burlington estate be probated?
At the Middlesex Probate and Family Court, 10-U Commerce Way in Woburn. Burlington was added to that court’s service area on 1 March 2023, joining seventeen other Middlesex communities. Assets held in a properly funded trust do not go through that process in any form.
I own a business in Burlington. What happens to it if something happens to me?
Whatever your documents say, and if they say nothing, the default outcome is usually worse than anything you would have chosen. The questions worth settling in advance are who has authority to run it, who has the right to buy out whom, how the business is valued, and whether there is liquidity to fund any of that. Those belong in the operating documents as much as in the estate plan.
Do I have to come to Woburn?
Our office is at TradeCenter 128 in Woburn, minutes from Burlington, with parking at the door. We also meet by video whenever that is easier. Plenty of the planning work does not require anyone to sit in a conference room.
What happens on the free consult call?
It is a short conversation with Nicole Ott, our Lead Intake Coordinator, about your situation and what you are trying to protect. It is not a meeting with an attorney and it is not a sales call, the point is to work out whether we are the right firm for you and what a plan would need to cover.