A partner in Womble Bond Dickinson’s Private Wealth Sector, Carl King helps clients achieve their family, financial, and estate planning goals while minimizing potential estate, gift, and income tax liabilities. He also represents foundations and public charities as an ongoing part of his practice.
Carl has extensive experience implementing intergenerational wealth transfers using charitable entities, closely held business interests, and life insurance strategies. He has drafted and implemented hundreds of complex gift and estate tax strategies, including generation-skipping trusts, family limited liability companies, installment sales to grantor trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATS), and various charitable entities.
Carl provides regular legal counsel to trusts and estates, advising them on sophisticated tax-saving opportunities, including disclaimers, tax elections and allocations, and other related matters, and defends them in gift and estate tax audits. He also provides legal defense for trusts and estates facing substantial claims from creditors or disgruntled beneficiaries and, conversely, helps beneficiaries and other constituents protect and enforce their claims against estates and trusts.
Carl is an active member of the legal community, both in North Carolina and more broadly across the U.S. He is a member of the American Bar Association’s Individual and Fiduciary Income Tax Committee and a fellow in the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), serving on its Fiduciary Tax Committee. He also holds leadership positions in the North Carolina Bar Association's Estate Planning and Fiduciary Law Section Council, including Section Ethics Chair and Section Liaison to the North Carolina Banker’s Association.
A frequent speaker and author on trusts and estates issues, Carl is also an adjunct professor in the University of Miami College of Law’s Heckerling Graduate Program in Estate Planning, where he teaches Valuation. In recent years, Carl’s most rewarding professional work has included co-authoring the ACTEC’s amicus brief to the Supreme Court of the U.S. in the Kaestner fiduciary income tax case; counseling families of all generations during the creation and growth of family offices; and providing legal advice on some of the largest charitable gifts in North Carolina’s history.
Representative Experience
Any result the lawyer or law firm may have achieved on behalf of clients in other matters does not necessarily indicate similar results can be obtained for other clients.
- Advised clients and implemented sophisticated estate planning techniques designed to help clients transfer assets worth billions of aggregate net wealth to younger generations and charities with minimum income and transfer tax.
- Successfully defended complex $82 million charitable gift, listed among the largest charitable gifts in 2011 by The Chronicle of Philanthropy; advised on parallel matters resulting in an additional $140 million in charitable gifts appearing in The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s “Philanthropy 50” in 2018.
- Advises clients with international estate concerns, including substantial contact with Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Mauritius, Nevis, Peru, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
- Appears as expert witness concerning tax and fiduciary matters in trust and estate cases.
- Develops and implements advanced partnership (e.g., LLC) planning and creative partnership exit strategies to significantly defer income and transfer taxes.
- Provides innovative transfer planning for clients owning a wide variety of assets, including sale of large contingency fee to perpetual grantor trust; structured investment (versus dealer) real estate transactions to preserve capital gains and coordinate with charitable conservation easements; and estate freezes coordinated with capital gain deferrals and monetization of concentrated positions in low-basis publicly-traded stock and real estate.
- Drafted and reviewed hundreds of standard advanced estate planning documents (e.g., wills, trusts, irrevocable trusts, family limited liability companies, gift transfers, sales to defective trusts, GRATs).
- Advised closely-held businesses, including analysis of potential S elections, preparation of stock recapitalizations, shareholders’ agreements, corporate and partnership liquidations, and salary continuation agreements.
- Counseled clients concerning charitable planning, including formation of supporting organizations, private foundations, public charities, CLATs, and CRTs (including preferred-partnership NIMCRUTs).
- Represented estates and beneficiaries in IRS audits, caveat proceedings, reformation proceedings, and advanced post-mortem planning (e.g., 6166 and Graegin-type interest deductions).
- Extensive involvement in public and private asset management, including selection and oversight of private money managers, close coordination with trust officers and investment bankers, and analysis and implementation of legal and financial monetization and diversification tools.
Certifications
- North Carolina State Bar Board Certified Specialist, Estate Planning and Probate Law, 2005-Present
Honors & Awards
- Recognized in The Best Lawyers in America, Tax Law and Trusts & Estates, 2018-Present; Named the Best Lawyers® “Lawyer of the Year” in Tax Law – Charlotte, 2021
- Selected to North Carolina Super Lawyers, 2014-Present
- Rated AV Preeminent by Martindale-Hubbell, 2012-Present
- Recognized in Chambers High Net Worth, 2018-2021
- Selected to the Business North Carolina List of Legal Elite, Tax and Estate Planning (2009, 2016, 2017, 2019)
- Recognized as “Pro Bono Attorney of the Year” by Legal Services of the Southern Piedmont, 2008
Professional & Civic Engagement
Professional
- American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), Fellow, 2018-Present
- Fiduciary Income Tax Committee Member, 2021-Present; Grantor Trust Subcommittee, Chair
- State Fiduciary Income Tax Subcommittee Member, 2022-Present
- Member of the ad hoc drafting subcommittee of the Amicus Review Committee for the Supreme Court of the United States AMICUS BRIEF of ACTEC in NCDOR v. The Kimberley Rice Kaestner 1992 Family Trust, Co-Author (Filed March 1, 2019)
- Chair of committee drafting Official Comments and expressing concerns to Treasury re: Monetized Installment Sale Transactions, 2023
- American Bar Association, Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section
- Individual and Fiduciary Income Tax Committee, Vice Chair, 2015-2019
- Official Comments on the Proposed Basis Consistency Regulations submitted to the IRS and U.S. Treasury on behalf of the Section, one of three principal authors (Filed June 23, 2016)
- North Carolina Bar Association, Estate Planning and Fiduciary Law Section
- Ethics Chair, 2022-Present
- Liaison to the North Carolina Banker’s Association, 2022-Present
- Council Member, 2016-2022
- Legislative Committee Member, 2013-Present
- UFIPA Subcommittee, Chair
- A principal drafter of the Section’s proposed formal state comments following North Carolina’s adoption of the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act
- University of Miami College of Law, Heckerling Graduate Program in Estate Planning, Adjunct Professor, Valuation, 2019-Present
Civic
- Charlotte Choir School, President (2007-2009, 2014-2019) and Board Member (2014-2020)
- Foundation for the Carolinas, Cabinet of Professional Advisors, 2014-2016
- Friends School of Charlotte, Board of Trustees, including Clerkship, 2008-2013
- Legal Services for the Elderly, Treasurer and Board Member, 2002-2007
- Legal Services of Southern Piedmont, Board Member, 2007-2008
- Queens University Estate Planning Day Steering Committee, 2007-2008
- St. Peters Episcopal Church, Charlotte, Subdeacon and Lector, Chorister
Thought Leadership
Publications
- “The Limits of North Carolina Fiduciary Income Taxation After Kaestner, Making Do With Continued Uncertainty,” The Will & The Way, Volume 39, No 2, Co-Author with Andrew Dinwiddie, March 2020
- “Kaestner’s Impact on NC Fiduciary Income Taxation,” NC Bar Association, Estate Planning & Fiduciary Law Section, August 2018
- “Stitching Shadows In Neverland: A Counterpart Basis Analysis Applied to Disregarded Promissory Notes and Assets Owned in Grantor Trusts,” Probate & Property, Co-Author with John Hodnette, November/December 2017
- “Kaestner and the Future of North Carolina Fiduciary Income Taxation,” The Will & the Way, Section Vol. 34, No. 4, June 2015
- “Tar Heel (or Is It Blue Devil) Trusts under North Carolina Law,” Leimberg Asset Protection, LISI Asset Protection Planning 271, Co-Author with Ryan Beadle, Michael Sneeringer, and Jonathan Gopman, November 24, 2014
Presentations
- “Final Basis Consistency Regulations,” ACTEC Fall National Meeting, Fiduciary Income Tax Committee, Co-Presenter with Gregg Simon, September 21, 2024
- “Making Hay While the Sun Shines: Navigating Industry Opportunities and the Landscape of Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLATs),” Queens University of Charlotte Estate Planners Day, Co-Presenter with Craig DeLucia, Andrea Chomakos, and Ken Samuelson, May 16, 2024
- “Advanced Fiduciary Income Tax Planning,” American Bar Association Real Property Trust and Estate Section Annual Meeting, Co-Presenter with Justin Miller and Karen Sandler Steinart, May 10, 2024
- “Potential Gift Tax Consequences of Modifying a Trust: CCA 202352018,” ACTEC Annual Meeting, Co-Presenter with Justin Miller, March 6, 2024
- “CCA 202352018: A Discussion,” ACTEC National Meeting, Fiduciary Income Tax Committee, Co-Presenter with Justin Miller, March 6, 2024
- “Comments on Proposed Regulations on Monetized Installment Sale Transactions,” ACTEC Fall Meeting, Co-Presenter with Gray Edmondson and Paul Lee, October 27, 2023
- “Planning Opportunities and Pitfalls with Installment Obligations,” ACTEC Annual Meeting, Co-Presenter with Paul Lee, March 4, 2023
- “A Review of the Landscape of State Income Taxation of Non-Grantor Trusts,” Southeast Fellows Institute of ACTEC, Co-Presenter with Andrea Chomakos, February 9, 2023
- “Advanced Fiduciary Income Tax Planning,” ACTEC ALI, Co-Presenter with Karen Sandler and Justin Miller, February 7, 2023
- “Evolution of Income Taxation of Trusts in Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania Following Recent Court Decisions,” ACTEC National Summer Meeting, Fiduciary Income Tax Committee, Co-Presenter with Karen Sandler Steinart, David Berek, and Richard Nenno (Materials Contributor), June 23, 2022
- “State Income Taxation of Non-Grantor Trusts,” Practising Law Institute 52nd Annual Estate Planning Institute, Co-Presenter with Andrea Chomakos, September 14, 2021
- “A Review of the Landscape of State Income Taxation of Non-Grantor Trusts,” University of North Carolina Tax Institute, Speaker Series (III), UNC School of Law, Co-Presenter with Andrea Chomakos, June 11, 2021
- “Helping Trusts Do More: Charitable Distributions under IRC 642(c),” Power to Give – National Christian Foundation, September 22-23, 2020
- “States of Decay: The Erosion of the State Fiduciary Income Tax Landscape (Kaestner, Fielding, and State Fiduciary Income Tax)”
- Land of the Sky Estate Planning Council, September 17, 2020
- San Francisco Estate Planning Council, September 18, 2019
- Georgia Federal Tax Conference, June 14, 2019
- ACTEC Southeast Regional Meeting, September 9, 2018
- Committee on Banking Institutions for Taxation’s 48th Annual Fall Tax Day, November 30, 2017
- “State Fiduciary Income Tax: Where the Action Is,” 31st Annual American Bar Association (ABA) Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section (RPTE) National CLE Conference, May 9-10, 2019
- “Death and Taxes: Understanding the Fiduciary Tax Forms Series: The 1041 Fiduciary Income Tax Return,” ABA RPTE CLE, March 7, 2019
- “Stitching Shadows in Neverland: Basis, Disregarded Notes and Grantor Trusts,” NC Bar Association, Estate Planning & Fiduciary Law Section Annual Meeting, July 27, 2018
- “Running the Gamut of Promissory Note Planning from A to Z: Review of the Opportunities and Potential Pitfalls Associated with Intra-Family Loans,” ABA RPTE Spring Symposia, April 2017
- “Fiduciary Accounts and Preparing and Filling Fiduciary Income Tax Returns,” ABA RPTE, Webinar, October 13, 2016
- “Beyond the Basis Consistency Basics,” ABA Income and Transfer Tax Planning Group Call, July 21, 2016
- “Challenges Presented by Basis Consistency Regulations and Forms,” ABA RPTE Spring Symposia, May 2016
- “Double Basis Step Up and Consensual Community Property: Coming Soon to a State Near You?” ABA RPTE Spring Symposia, May 2016
- “Post-Mortem ILITs: ‘Better a Lender Than a Buyer Be:’ Graegin Loan Design,” The McGehee Group, Inc., 2014
- “Stern Tax Planning: Planning from the ‘Back of the Boat:’ Installment Notes, Graegin Loans, Upstream LLC’s,” EY Family Office and Tax Education Series, 2013
- “Fiduciary Income Tax of North Carolina Trusts and Estates,” NC Bar Association Estate Planning and Probate Law Survey Course, 2013
- “Wimpy Tax Planning: I Will Gladly Pay You ‘Tuesday’ for Diversification, Today,” EY Family Office and Tax Education Series, 2011
- “Preparing Wills and Estate Planning Documents for Low-Income, Elderly Clients,” CLE Sponsored by Legal Aid of North Carolina and Legal Services of Southern Piedmont, 2006-Present
