About Diane B. Burks

Diane Burks advises her clients on matters related to tax and wealth transfer planning, estate and trust administration, business succession planning and charitable giving. Diane creates comprehensive estate plans for her clients so they can preserve their family's wealth for successive generations, while minimizing transfer and income taxes, integrating the client's personal non-tax goals and striving to ensure that her clients understand their planning.

Sophisticated estate and tax planning

Diane uses her extensive knowledge of transfer tax planning and her understanding of a client's goals to create a comprehensive and tax-efficient estate plan that takes the family's personal circumstances into account. Diane’s clients appreciate how Diane can break down complicated tax and legal issues and her desire for her clients to understand their planning.

Diane works with her clients to create comprehensive estate plans, which may include wills, revocable trusts, irrevocable dynasty trusts, limited liability companies, shareholder agreements, marital agreements, irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs) and modification or reformation of existing irrevocable trusts. Diane also structures and implements lifetime and testamentary wealth transfer strategies such as grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), spousal lifetime access trusts (SLATs), and gifts and sales to dynasty trusts.

Diane also counsels clients on charitable objectives, including the creation, administration and termination of charitable trusts, and the creation and administration of public charities, private foundations and other tax-exempt organizations. She also represents executors, personal representatives, trustees and beneficiaries in probate and trust administration, as well as post- mortem planning. Diane routinely advises executors on estate administration, including the preparation and filing of probate documents, the transfer of assets, and the preparation and filing of estate and gift tax returns.

Additionally, Diane counsels business owners on business succession planning by drafting and reviewing organizational documents, operating agreements, shareholder agreements and buy-sell agreements, as well as implementing gifts or sales of business interest to irrevocable trusts.

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Practice Focus

  • Estate planning and administration
  • Tax planning and wealth transfer
  • Charitable giving
  • Business succession planning

News

Publications

Practices
Industries
Education
  • Wake Forest University School of Law, JD, magna cum laude, Order of the Coif
  • Duke University, BA
Bar Admissions
  • North Carolina
  • South Carolina
Community Involvements
  • Mecklenburg County Bar, Leadership Institute
  • North Carolina Bar Association
  • South Carolina Bar
  • Charlotte Estate Planning Council
Recognitions
Recognized or listed in the following:
  • Business North Carolina
    Legal Elite Young Gun, 2017, 2024
  • Chambers High Net Worth
    North Carolina: Private Wealth Law, 2024
  • Charlotte Business Journal
    40 Under 40, 2019
  • Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP Pro Bono Service Award
    2011
  • Super Lawyers Rising Stars
    North Carolina, 2017
  • The Mecklenburg Times
    50 Most Influential Women, 2016
Award Methodologies