Cindy Basham
OF COUNSEL
O: 303.243.3100 D: 720.345.0144
OVERVIEW
I began my career at a large national firm as a corporate and securities attorney. However, the practice lacked personal connection, and when I was given the opportunity to transfer into the firm’s estate planning group, I jumped at the opportunity. My foundation in corporate law has significantly enhanced my approach to estate planning and administration, providing a robust understanding of the intersection between business and personal wealth. Throughout my fourteen years as an estate planner, I have had the privilege of focusing on advising high net worth clients. I delve into their backgrounds, families, assets, and objectives to craft tax efficient estate plans that ultimately leave a lasting legacy for each family. I have also had the privilege to counsel clients who have lost a loved one through the probate and trust administration process. Serving as an executor or trustee during such a time is never easy, and I find providing guidance during this period in their lives personally fulfilling.
Prior to joining Tuthill & Hughes in 2024, I worked at a boutique estate planning firm in Palm Beach County, Florida, focusing on high-net-worth estate planning. Prior to that, I practiced in the private wealth services group of Holland & Knight LLP, a large national law firm, and prior to that in its public companies’ group.
- Meeting with clients to learn about their family dynamics and to discuss their estate planning goals.
- Educating clients with respect to the federal estate tax, gift tax, and generation-skipping transfer tax.
- Explaining the benefits of revocable trusts, living wills, medical powers of attorney, and powers of attorney for property.
- Counseling on the various options for transferring wealth at death and during life in a tax efficient manner, including irrevocable life insurance trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), intentionally defective irrevocable trusts, and spousal lifetime access trusts.
- Coordinating with a client’s financial advisor and accountant or family office personnel.
- Proposing solutions for trustees and beneficiaries of irrevocable trusts who seek a trust modification, trust merger, or a trust decanting transaction and preparing the relevant documents.
- Negotiating and preparing premarital and postmarital agreements.
- Structuring business succession plans.
- Preparing entity-related governance documents, including operating agreements and shareholders agreements.
- Counseling a client through the probate process, filing of a federal estate tax return, and trust administration.
- Attending a meeting of the Trust & Estate section of the Colorado Bar Association or listening to a seminar to stay abreast of developments in estate planning law.
- Exploring the mountains with my husband, two school-aged sons, and our mini doodle.
- Executive Council of the Real Property, Probate, and Trust Law Section of the Florida Bar (end 2018)
- Florida Bar Journal, Co-Vice Chair of the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section (end 2018)
- Board of Directors, Women in Distress, 2008-2015
- Leadership Fort Lauderdale, Class XVII
- Phi Delta Phi Legal Honor Society, 2003
Licensed
- Colorado since 2020
- District of Columbia since 2019
- Florida since 2005
Bar Associations
- Colorado
- Florida
- J.D., Stetson College of Law, 2005
- B.A., Political Science, Florida International University, 2002
- Shedding Light on Keeping Beneficiaries in the Dark, Florida Bar Journal, Vol.89, No.6