Practice Focus

Kurt F. Somerville has more than 30 years of experience advising families and individuals on trust and estate matters. As a lawyer and trustee, Kurt works with clients to preserve, enhance, and transfer family wealth. His practice includes wealth management, estate, financial, and tax planning, and probate matters. He is the former head of the firm's Trust Department and has an active practice serving as a professional fiduciary.

Working with leading charitable trusts and foundations, Kurt advises clients on foundation management and governance. His experience includes grantmaking, tax reporting, compliance, investment management and philanthropic giving programs. Kurt also works with foundations on strategic planning to ensure their long-term success.

Kurt is also a Managing Director at Hemenway Trust Company, a private fiduciary firm based in Salem, New Hampshire.

Representative Experience

• Co-Trustee of Jane's Trust Foundation, a leading charitable trust in New England, the CHT Foundation, and others.
• Co-Trustee of several private family trust complexes, with responsibility for preserving, enhancing and managing wealth for multiple generations of beneficiaries.
• Executor and counsel for decedents' estates of varying sizes and degrees of complexity.
• Planning for the ownership, management and succession of family vacation properties, including preparation of various trusts, family limited partnerships and limited liability companies, qualified personal residence trusts (QPRT's), and conservation easements.
• Administrator of an association of landowners with coastal properties, including common green space, roads and docks.
• Co-Trustee of a trust owning islands and an Adirondack camp in upstate New York.
• Counsel for numerous family groups, with responsibility for creating and managing comprehensive estate plans for multiple generations.
• Representation of estate planning clients with unusual assets, including closely held business, foreign real estate, and general partner interests in venture capital and private equity partnerships.