LAW OFFICES OF THOMAS A. COUGHLIN

Born: Boston, Massachusetts

ISLN: 908164156

Education:

• Boston College Law School, J.D., 1970
• Hiram College; Brandeis University, B.A., 1967

Admitted:

• 1970, Massachusetts
• 1979, District of Columbia
• 1987, U.S. Tax Court
• 1991, Maryland
• 1993, Virginia

Memberships:

• American Bar Association
  • Member, Sections of Taxation and Section of Real Property, Probate and Trust Law
  • Former Chair, Committee on Historic Preservation and Land Conservation
• District of Columbia Bar
  • Member, Section of Taxation
    • Committee on Estate and Gift Taxation
  • Probate and Trust Law Section
• Virginia Bar
  • Member, Trusts and Estates Section
• Maryland Bar
• Massachusetts Bar (Inactive)
• Member Washington, DC Estate Planning Council
  • Editor of Newsletter 1996 to 2004
  • Board of Directors, 1996 to 2004
  • Secretary 2002
  • Treasurer 2004
  • Co-chair, Hariton Study Group, 2008 to present

Reported Cases: Higgins v. Commissioner, TC Memo 1990-103 Easement Valuation case upheld a 44 percent reduction in value as result of open space easement.

Personal Statement about Biography

Mr. Coughlin is AV-Rated® by Martindale-Hubbell® peer-review rating system. This is the highest rating an attorney can receive for excellence in legal practice and ethics.

He is a tax, business and estate planning attorney with almost 40 years of varied experience in government, non-profit and private practice settings. His practice is concentrated in estate planning and related gift, estate and charitable tax planning, estate and trust administration, and family business planning.

The practice emphasizes the use of revocable living trusts and beneficiary-controlled irrevocable trusts to accomplish a family's varied asset protection, financial, philanthropic and tax planning objectives. Mr. Coughlin has a deep personal interest in working with families to keep significant properties in family ownership through a combination of conservation easements, foundations, family business entities, irrevocable trusts, and other arrangements. While at the National Trust, he served as the principal author of Appraising Easements: Guidelines for the Valuation of Easements for Land Conservation and Historic Preservation jointly published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Land Trust Alliance, in continuous publication since 1984.

Before entering private practice in 1985, Mr. Coughlin served as tax and real estate counsel to the National Trust for Historic Preservation for almost ten years. At the Trust, he was responsible for advising the Trust and its individual and organizational members on private techniques to protect and preserve significant properties in continued private ownership.

He has lived in McLean, Virginia, since 1977 with his wife and their four daughters.