James R. (Bud) Strong

A former leader of the firm’s Private Wealth group, Bud applies his 35-plus years of legal and business experience to guide clients in designing and implementing sophisticated estate plans and business succession and exit plans. His practice also involves estate and trust administration, estate and gift tax planning, buy-sell agreements, charitable planning and asset protection, representation of trustees, creditor protection, divorce protection, and trust and estate dispute resolution.

Bud regularly deals with challenging situations involving the wealth of families and closely held businesses, including situations involving challenging family dynamics. He uses his creativity and depth of knowledge to find the right solutions for each client’s unique circumstances. Bud enjoys the challenge of developing creative solutions to often difficult issues involved in planning for succession of control and ownership of closely held businesses and assisting high net worth clients in avoiding or minimizing exposure to estate taxes.

Bud’s focus is to help those clients who recognize the importance of taking a thoughtful and proactive approach to their estate planning and business succession planning. Many are the beneficiaries of similar planning done by their parents, and they want to pass it forward. Others have seen the negative results of failing to plan properly, and they wish to avoid those problems in their own planning. The payoff is peace of mind from knowing they have done their best to protect not only their immediate families but future generations as well.