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Overview

Our Tax practice group represents clients seeking to form, reorganize, and liquidate both public and private business entities. We also handle tax litigation and have successfully represented clients in substantial tax controversies with the Internal Revenue Service and the Florida Department of Revenue. We have experience guiding clients through the wide array of tax issues that confront corporations, partnerships, limited liability companies, individuals, trusts and estates. 

We also counsel clients in the design, implementation and operation of employee pension plans, including 401(k) plans and ESOPs, welfare benefit plans, such as life and health insurance plans, and equity-based and performance-based executive compensation plans.

Additionally, we represent individuals with respect to the broad array of tax issues that they face. Our clients include foreign investors in the United States, and American investors abroad. In addition, we have served as counsel for a wide range of tax-exempt organizations.

Our Trust & Estates practice guides clients through the complexities of planning a will or trust. Because this often evokes the anxieties and emotions associated with having to consider one’s own eventual death, we are sensitive to this fact and strive to inspire the confidence of all those involved. We strive to anticipate potential problems in probate or guardianship situations and to structure an estate plan which minimizes such problems. 

Several of our Trust & Estates attorneys has received an advanced law degree in taxation, and each is admitted to practice before Florida’s probate courts in both uncontested administrative matters and probate litigation. We provide legal counseling, plan for possible disability, offer disposition and tax planning, and prepare complex legal documents.

  • Banking & Financial Institutions
  • Bankruptcy
  • Business & Individual Tax Planning
  • Employee Benefits
    Stearns Weaver Miller’s Employee Benefits practice counsels employers in the design, implementation and operation of employee pension and welfare plans and executive equity and deferred compensation programs. We also represent employers before the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Labor in the matters of initial and continuing tax qualification and audits of plans. We advise employers on handling employees’ claims for benefits, as well as strategizing the defense of any claims. Further, we have considerable experience providing tax advice and services to tax-exempt organizations in their efforts to provide competitive benefits to diverse groups of employees.

    Our lawyers have handled significant and sophisticated ERISA litigation on behalf of employers, plan administrators, trustees and individual defendants. We have handled the defense of numerous types of claims, including claims for severance, disability and other welfare benefits; claims for benefits under ERISA top hat plans, such as supplemental executive retirement plans; claims for breach of fiduciary duty against corporate board members, internal benefits appeals committees, and trustees; claims of procedural and substantive violations under ERISA plans; discrimination under ERISA § 510; and claims for executive benefits and stock options.

    We have litigated ERISA cases in state court, federal district court, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and have briefed issues to the United States Supreme Court. Our Employee Benefits lawyers have experience with issues of ERISA exhaustion of administrative remedies requirement and futility issues, ERISA preemption, statute of limitations issues (regarding both fiduciary and non-fiduciary claims), distinguishing between fiduciary and settlor functions, issues relating to the appropriate standard of review and plan administrators’ conflicts of interest, interpretation of plan amendment, termination, vesting, accrual and anti-cutback provisions, remedies available for technical procedural violations, delegation of fiduciary and claims administration functions, ERISA’s church plan exemption, and attorney-client privilege issues.
  • Estate & Trust Litigation
  • Estate & Wealth Transfer Planning
  • Executive Compensation
  • FDOR Sales & Use Tax Audits & Disputes
  • Guardianships
  • Insurance
  • International Tax
  • IRS Controversies
  • Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Probate Administration
  • Real Estate
  • State & Local Sales Tax
  • Tax-Exempt Organizations
  • Trust Administration 
  • Trusts & Estates
    Stearns Weaver Miller’s Trust & Estates practice guides clients through the complexities of planning a will or trust. Because this often evokes the anxieties and emotions associated with having to consider one’s own eventual death, we are sensitive to this fact and strive to inspire the confidence of all those involved. We strive to anticipate potential problems in probate or guardianship situations and to structure an estate plan which minimizes such problems.

    Each of our Trust & Estates attorneys has received an advanced law degree in taxation, and each is admitted to practice before Florida’s probate courts in both uncontested administrative matters and probate litigation. We provide legal counseling, plan for possible disability, offer disposition and tax planning, and prepare complex legal documents.

    We also work closely with other professionals, such as physicians, accountants, stockbrokers, realtors, appraisers, corporate trustees, insurance agents, financial planners, and other attorneys in the Firm on estate matters which require expertise in unrelated areas.

Publications: The Season of Giving... to Your Ex-Spouse
Florida Banking|December 2022|Kelly A. O'Keefe

Publications: Who Pays A Trustee’s Attorneys’ Fees?
Florida Banking|May 2022|Kelly A. O'Keefe

Events: Back to Work or No More Work? - Employee Benefits Issues
July 2020|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Events: Virtual Webinar - Drafting to Protect the Settlor from Himself
Estate Planning Council of Greater Miami Workshop + Presentation |April 2020|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Land Development News Update, Publications: Qualified Opportunity Zones
Stearns Weaver Miller News Update|August 2018|Maria A. Gralia, Christopher P. Smith, Nicole Neugebauer MacInnes

Events: Executive Compensation and Partnership Awards
Greater Miami Tax Institute |August 2017|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Publications: EEOC Wellness Plan Controversy: All’s Well That Ends Well?
BeLabor The Point Blog |April 2017|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Publications: The Cayman Islands: A Very Convenient Truth in Financial Oversight
Daily Business Review |March 2017

Publications: New Law Widens Insurance Options for Eligible Small Employers
BeLabor The Point Blog |December 2016

Events: Predicting, Preventing and When Necessary….Preparing for Will Contests
Academy of Florida Elder Law Attorneys |December 2016|Kelly A. O'Keefe

Events: Stearns Weaver Miller's 26th Annual Labor & Employment Law Seminar
JW Marriott Marquis Miami |May 2016

Publications: Have an Election Season Free From Tax Penalties!
BeLabor the Point Blog |March 2016|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Publications: Turn a FICA Sting Into a FICA Benefit
BeLabor the Point Blog |January 2016|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Publications: Is Your Discretionary Trust Subject to Garnishment? Maybe...
Doing Business in Florida|November 2015|Kelly A. O'Keefe

Publications: So Boring but So Important – Vendor Service Agreements
BeLabor the Point Blog |November 2015|Sharon Quinn Dixon

In the Media: Legal Team Advising on Sunset Place Switched to CocoWalk and Back Again
Daily Business Review|October 2015

In the Media: Stearns Weaver Team Handles CocoWalk Acquisition
Daily Business Review|June 2015

Publications: Let My People Go (to the Marketplace)
BeLabor the Point Blog |November 2014|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Events: The Top HR “Need to Knows” about the Affordable Care Act
Stearns Weaver Miller Labor & Employment Breakfast Series |November 2014|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Events: It’s Not Just a Form! – Important Details in IRA/Plan Beneficiary Designations
Estate Planning Council of Greater Miami |October 2014|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Events: Wine Tasting & Estate Planning Seminar
Stearns Weaver Miller Miami Office |September 2014|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Events: Trust and Estate Law CLE webinar
American Bar Association Section of Real Property |August 2014|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Publications: Health Care Reform – Business as Usual (for Now)
BeLabor the Point Blog |August 2014|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Publications: It’s Summer: How to Treat Your Interns Under the ACA
BeLabor the Point Blog |June 2014|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Events: Stearns Weaver Miller’s 24th Annual Labor and Employment Law Seminar
Trump National Doral Miami |May 2014

Events: Healthcare Reform & Benefit Planning: Managing Change, Mitigating Cost
Stearns Weaver Miller Labor & Employment Breakfast Series |October 2011|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Events: Tax Issues on Settlement of Employment Cases
Florida National Employment Lawyers Association Summer Conference |September 2011|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Events: Stearns Weaver Miller’s 21st Annual Labor & Employment Law Seminar
Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino |May 2011

Events: Benefits Think Tank- New Burdens on Your 401 (k) Plan: Are You Prepared?
Stearns Weaver Miller Labor & Employment Breakfast Series |April 2011|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Events: Time For Action on Employer-Sponsored Group Health Plan Mandates
Webinar |August 2010|Sharon Quinn Dixon

Events: Stearns Weaver Miller’s 20th Annual Labor and Employment Law Seminar
Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino |May 2010

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