Overview
Adam K. Sherman provides legal counsel on a wide range of wealth transfer, tax, estate planning and business succession matters for high-net-worth individuals and business owners.
Adam has extensive experience structuring and implementing sophisticated wealth transfer techniques and working with owners of closely held businesses to develop customized succession plans. Adam also advises clients on a range of issues relating to the formation and maintenance of family office and private trust company structures.
Adam counsels executors, trustees and beneficiaries in all aspects of estate and trust administration, including the preparation of federal estate tax returns and judicial and non-judicial trust accountings. He has also been involved in numerous estate and gift tax audit proceedings before the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and has successfully obtained favorable private letter rulings for his clients on a range of income and transfer tax issues.
On international matters, Adam has advised multinational families on compliance with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and counseled US-based clients participating in the IRS’s Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP).
Adam has spoken extensively on estate planning topics, including wealth transfer planning, gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax reporting, and exercising powers of appointment.
While in law school, Adam was a staff member of the Chicago Journal of International Law, in which he has his note (on the international legal status of drone operators) published in 2004.
Results
- Advised family shareholders on the sale of a controlling stake in a $600 million publicly traded company
- Developed and implemented a customized Nevada private trust company to serve as trustee of a billion-dollar GST-exempt trust
- Designed a non-judicial settlement agreement to resolve a trust construction dispute involving a $100 million GST-exempt trust and obtained a favorable IRS private letter ruling concerning the tax consequences of the agreement
- Obtained a favorable IRS private letter ruling on the tax consequences of jointly held powers of appointment over a trust to be funded with over $100 million in assets
- Advised a group of individual trustees on the tax, fiduciary and regulatory issues related to the recapitalization of a private bank holding company
- Structured a $120 million net gift agreement to transfer a client’s investment assets to her grandchildren during the temporary repeal of the GST tax
- Designed a family settlement agreement to correct a prior erroneous transfer of $40 million of stock in a private family business from a trust and obtained a favorable private letter ruling on the tax consequences of the agreement
Recognitions
- Chambers High Net Worth, Illinois: Private Wealth Law, 2021–2024
- Best Lawyers in America, Trust and Estates, Chicago, 2025
- Leading Lawyers 2015, “Emerging Lawyer” in the area of Trust, Will & Estate Planning Law
Credentials
Education
University of Chicago Law School, JD, 2005
Northwestern University, BA, 2001
Admissions
Illinois
Wisconsin