BakerHostetler has announced that Carmela T. Montesano has joined the firm’s private wealth team as a partner based in New York. Montesano joins from Greenberg Traurig LLP.
Montesano is a trust and estate lawyer with more than three decades of experience helping clients create estate and business plans that incorporate a global view of their finances and maximize tax efficiency.
Adding to the firm’s continued investment in its Northeast private wealth and tax planning practice, Montesano is the fourth partner to join the practice team just in the past two months. That includes two of her former Greenberg Traurig colleagues, Jonathan Forster and Rebecca Manicone, who joined the team in May and are based in Washington, D.C.
Montesano’s practice includes all aspects of estate planning, including creating estate, business and charitable plans designed to last for generations. She focuses on sophisticated estate, gift and generation-skipping tax matters, including preparing related tax returns, participating in estate and gift tax audits, and submitting private letter ruling requests. She also prepares many different estate planning instruments, including wills and revocable trusts, irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs), grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), qualified personal residence trusts (QPRTs), intentionally defective grantor trusts (IDGTs), qualified subchapter S trusts (QSSTs), electing small business trusts (ESBTs), sales to intentionally defective grantor trusts, and private annuity sales.
“Carmela’s experience handling complex matters and her commitment to building lifelong relationships with her clients represent the core traits BakerHostetler looks for in all its estate planning attorneys,” said Robert Galloway, head of the firm’s private wealth team. “We are excited to bring her skill set on board as the firm continues to expand its already robust tax and estate planning practice.”
“BakerHostetler has always prioritized high-quality service, whether that involves business advice, personal estate planning or any other client need,” said George Stamboulidis, managing partner of the New York office. “With the addition of Carmela, our clients should know our strong private wealth planning team just got even stronger.”
Montesano received her B.A. from Fairfield University and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.
“BakerHostetler’s team approach to estate planning and its commitment to innovation will be extremely valuable to my clients,” said Montesano. “I look forward to collaborating with the attorneys at the firm to create new and exciting ways to approach private wealth planning.”