Jesse C. Beier

Jesse helps individuals, families, and business owners preserve and transfer wealth through thoughtful estate and tax planning. His practice focuses on clients with substantial assets, closely held business interests and multigenerational planning goals, while also serving individuals and families who need a comprehensive foundational estate plan.

Jesse advises on strategies to reduce estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes, provide for future generations, and coordinate the succession of family businesses and other significant assets. His work includes spousal lifetime access trusts (SLATs), grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs), lifetime gifts, and trust and entity structures tailored to each client’s circumstances. He also incorporates creditor protection for beneficiaries, charitable planning and flexibility to address changing family needs and tax laws.

Jesse’s approach starts with understanding how clients want their wealth to support their families and the legacy they hope to leave. He explains complex planning options in practical terms and helps clients weigh tax benefits alongside access to assets, control and family considerations. Working closely with financial advisors, accountants and other professionals, he coordinates the development and implementation of each plan.

His planning practice is complemented by extensive work in probate and trust administration. Jesse advises trustees, personal representatives and beneficiaries on trust funding, asset distributions, business interests and tax obligations. He prepares federal estate and gift tax returns, including Forms 706 and 709, and advises on related elections and generation-skipping transfer tax exemption allocations.

Jesse also assists with trust interpretation, modification, decanting, mergers, and nonjudicial settlement agreements and represents fiduciaries and beneficiaries in probate and trust disputes. This experience helps him develop estate plans with an understanding of how they will operate in practice.

He prepares prenuptial and postnuptial agreements that coordinate with estate plans and address family wealth and business interests. He also speaks at continuing legal education programs on estate planning, trust law and tax strategies and participates in legislative initiatives through the Minnesota State Bar Association’s Probate & Trust Law Section.

• Develops estate and wealth transfer plans for individuals, families and owners of closely held businesses.
• Structures SLATs, GRATs, ILITs and other irrevocable trusts to advance tax and family planning goals.
• Advises on lifetime gifting and multigenerational planning, including estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer tax strategies.
• Coordinates Minnesota estate tax planning with federal transfer-tax and income-tax considerations.
• Develops business succession plans and structures for transferring closely held business interests.
• Designs trusts to preserve family wealth and protect beneficiaries’ inheritances from creditor claims.
• Integrates charitable giving into estate and wealth transfer plans.
• Prepares wills, revocable trusts, powers of attorney, health care directives and related estate planning documents.
• Prepares federal estate tax returns (Form 706) and gift and generation-skipping transfer tax returns (Form 709), including related elections and exemption allocations.
• Guides trustees and personal representatives through probate and trust administration, trust funding and asset distributions.
• Advises on trust interpretation, modification, decanting, mergers and nonjudicial settlement agreements.
• Represents fiduciaries and beneficiaries in probate and trust disputes.
• Prepares prenuptial and postnuptial agreements addressing family wealth, business interests and estate planning.
• Collaborates with financial advisors, accountants and other professionals to implement coordinated plans.

Education

• University of St. Thomas School of Law, J.D., 2010
• University of Kansas, B.G.S., 2003

Admissions

• Minnesota, 2010
• Wisconsin, 2016

• Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch, Trusts and Estates, 2021-2025; Litigation – Trusts and Estates, 2022, 2024-2025
• North Star Lawyer, Minnesota State Bar Association, 2020-2023

Professional Activities

• Minnesota State Bar Association, Member
• Minnesota State Bar Association, Probate & Trust Law Section Council, Member
• Minnesota State Bar Association, Probate & Trust Law Section Legislative Committee, Co-Chair
• Uniform Probate Code Review Committee, Member