Overview
Jeanette Suarez Hunter advises high-net-worth individuals, families, family offices and business owners on a wide range of tax, business, succession planning and charitable-giving matters. Jeanette takes a holistic approach to helping her clients preserve their legacies and transfer wealth to future generations, while giving care to each family’s unique dynamics.
Jeanette has extensive experience working with families on ownership issues involving their privately owned business, including governance issues, succession planning, privacy protection and shareholder agreements. She also regularly counsels younger generation family members on learning to be responsible stewards of wealth.
Jeanette frequently counsels her clients on the formation and operation of family offices and private trust companies. She also has significant experience advising individual and corporate fiduciaries and trust beneficiaries in complex estate and trust administration matters.
Jeanette speaks to local and national audiences on tax and estate planning topics. Jeanette is the head of the Chicago office’s Private Client Practice Group and serves as an elected member of the Firm’s Management Committee.
Results
- Routinely works with family offices on a variety of ongoing and complex matters involving estate planning, philanthropy, wealth transfer transactions and investment structures
- Developed long-term ownership strategies and governance agreements for a multi-generational family that owns a significant privately held operating business
- Structured a new family office for a client following the sale of the family business, including tax-efficient structures for the family office’s investment partnerships
- Represented a multi-generational family in the implementation of an integrated plan to transfer closely held business from terminating trusts in a tax-efficient transfer of wealth to irrevocable perpetual trusts
- Prepared straightforward and complex estate plans for individuals with net worth ranging from twenty million to multiple billion dollars
- Represented families in the creation and implementation of a private trust company and transition of family trusts to the new private trust company
- Managed complex estate administrations with unique assets, including management of Internal Revenue Service and state estate tax audits
Recognitions
- Chambers High Net Worth, Illinois: Private Wealth Law, 2023–2024
- Best Lawyers in America, Trusts and Estates, Chicago, 2018–2025
- Selected by Law Bulletin Publishing Company’s Leading Lawyers Division for 2015, 2016 and 2017 Lists of Emerging Lawyers Under Age 40 in the area of Trust, Will & Estate Planning Law
Community
- American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), Fellow
- Chicago Estate Planning Council, Member
Credentials
Education
Northwestern University School of Law, JD, cum laude, 2004
University of Georgia, BBA, magna cum laude and With Honors, 2001
Admissions
Illinois, 2004
Languages
English
Spanish
