Biography
Brad Fletcher helps his clients minimize tax exposure and maximize individual wealth and organizational stability. Brad is a skilled and creative attorney with extensive experience in all matters related to individual and family wealth and estate planning, including trusts and wills, probate, marital deduction trusts, spousal lifetime access trusts, life insurance trusts, gift planning, marital property agreements, family limited partnerships, and gift and estate tax audits.
Beyond Brad’s estate planning practice is a robust client base of nonprofits and tax-exempt organizations, where he provides comprehensive legal representation, including guiding both private foundations and public charities through situations that are unique to tax-exempt organizations. Nonprofit clients look to Brad to help them form entities, obtain state and IRS tax-exempt status, obtain private letter rulings, represent them before the IRS and state taxing authorities, and develop and implement sophisticated tax and financial plans.
Clients who work with Brad quickly see his passion for two things, helping them and music. When Brad can combine the two, absolute magic occurs. As an accomplished drummer, Brad understands the struggles and needs of those in the arts and culture industry. Brad has several clients who focus on music education, expanding the reach of music, and using performing arts to further their mission through the use of concerts and musical benefits.
Representative Experience
- Develop strategies and structures to avoid unrelated business taxable income and minimize the risk of UBIT
- Serve as outside general counsel for a New Orleans-based jazz band, including managing an organizational restructuring and change in tax status, taking them from a private foundation to a public charity
- Created a nonprofit corporation that utilizes a large country music concert as their key fundraising activity in raising funds to further their mission of cancer research
- Successfully defended 501c3 in an IRS audit of their tax-exempt bonds to protect their tax-exempt status
- Assisted international multicultural arts organizations with multiple transactions to acquire similar organizations to further their mission
- Set up a California-based private foundation that focuses on providing dental reconstruction work for Veterans
- Issues equivalency determinations for private foundations engaged in foreign grantmaking in a variety of countries, including Africa, Europe, South America, and Asia
Education
- J.D. Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law
- LL.M DePaul University College of Law
- B.A. Southern Methodist University
Memberships
- Estate Planning Class Instructor for Southern Methodist University’s CFP Program
- Former Board Member, Notre Dame School
- IRS Tax Exempt/Governmental Entity Council
- Former Board Member, Dallas Parks Project
- Former Board Member, Prevent Blindness Texas
- Leadership Dallas
Achievements
- The Best Lawyers in America®
- The Best Lawyers in Dallas, D Magazine, 2016-2021