OUR ATTORNEYS

Jennifer L. Zegel

Jennifer L. Zegel is a partner at Kleinbard and is the Practice Leader of the Firm’s Trusts and Estates Group. She focuses her practice on the representation of clients in the areas of trusts and estates, business law, and real estate. She handles a wide range of trusts and estates matters including the drafting of wills, trusts, special needs trusts, powers of attorney, and health care powers of attorney documents at all levels of complexity. In addition, Jennifer assists clients in estate, trust, and guardianship administration, and business succession planning. She regularly advises fiduciaries with respect to their duties and obligations in connection with the administration of estates and trusts, and serves as outside counsel to several corporate fiduciaries.

A significant portion of Jennifer’s trusts and estates practice is devoted to asset distribution while minimizing potential tax liability on asset transfers, as well as formulating creative plans for unique family situations and dynamics. Jennifer advises clients on all aspects of estate and tax planning, including estate tax, generation-skipping transfer tax, gift tax, state death taxes, and fiduciary income taxes. Jennifer is also a trained mediator and has worked with multiple families in contentious estates to reach an amicable resolution on the distribution of assets without the need for judicial intervention.

Her experience also includes entity formation, drafting and negotiating commercial contracts, shareholder, partnership and operating agreements, and analyzing business structures for legal, liability, and tax issues while providing cost-saving business solutions to clients. In addition, she handles real estate matters for both residential and commercial clients and has vast experience remedying tangled title disputes.

Jennifer also has a special focus in estate planning and the estate administration of digital assets, which is becoming a fast growing and increasingly complex area. She is at the forefront of this emerging section of property transfers, which also overlaps and intersects with technology, privacy, and accessibility considerations. Jennifer regularly advises clients on how to incorporate digital asset planning into an estate plan or business succession plan.

Jennifer is a sought-after speaker, thought leader, and media source on the topics of estate planning, with a special focus on digital assets, cryptocurrency, and blockchain technology. She has been featured in a number of publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Bloomberg Tax. She is also the co-author of “Digital Asset Entanglement: Unraveling the Intersection of Estate Laws & Technology,” a book published in 2022 by LexisNexis that explores the ways technology has disrupted the traditionally paper-based estate industry and provides a practical framework for global advisors and clients alike to incorporate digital assets into the estate planning conversation. In addition, by working with two other Philadelphia attorneys, Jennifer co-created and co-hosts the Digital Planning Podcast, which is dedicated to exploring all things digital in connection with estate planning, business planning, and estate administration. She is also a Fellow of The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), an international organization of approximately 2,400 lawyers peer-elected to membership by demonstrating the highest level of integrity, commitment to the profession, competence, and expertise in the preparation of wills and trusts, estate planning, probate, trust administration and related practice areas.