Artist Estate and Legacy Planning

You may have spent decades honing your craft, fine-tuning your skill, and building your creative archive, which reflects your passions, dedication, values, and commitment to creating something beautiful.  It makes sense that you would want a trusted partner to help you think about what will happen to it in the future. 

At Expand Law, we provide compassionate, personalized, discrete, and thoughtful advice and representation to NYC and Brooklyn artists considering their plans for their estate and legacy. 

Among other things, we handle:

• Drafting, finalizing and executing wills, trusts, living wills, healthcare proxies, and powers of attorney with your priorities in mind

• Representing estates and administrators through probate and administration

• Working with your family and trusted individuals in managing your legacy

• Consulting with your administrators and executors in handling appraisals of your catalogue, creating catalogue raisonné, and giving advice relating to the sale of your work to private individuals or through auction

Expand Law understands that when you begin planning for your estate or legacy, you will likely have more than one key priority, including the handling of your work and the well-being of the people you delegate that responsibility to.  We will help you through the process of selecting an executor you can trust to respect your work and ensure them that we will support them so that they are not unduly burdened with handling the responsibility of your legacy alone.

Structuring Your Legacy

Structuring a legacy begins in life.  Together with your advisor, Lindsey will consult with you on works involved in your catalogue and your desires about how they are used after death.

It is important to consider who will be named as your executor, or the person responsible for collecting and selling your estate’s assets, paying any debts and recovering any money owed to the estate, and managing your art, intellectual property, and personal archives.  The executor should, first and foremost, understand its obligations to the beneficiaries of your estate and be able to operate without self-interested motivations.

The best person to serve as your executor is a sympathetic and competent family member as opposed to an advisor or an attorney.  Absent special circumstances, such as the absence of a trusted family member or friend, placing someone like this in the role of executor may come with challenges but usually allows the artist to rest assured that their priorities will be at the forefront of any decision-making.  The executor can then hire a team including an advisor or attorney to help them follow through with any decisions they make with your priorities in mind.

For fine artists, your executor may also work with a gallery, particularly a gallery with whom you may have a longstanding relationship, to build out your legacy, develop catalogue raisonné, or organize exhibitions from different eras of your life and work. 

Lindsey Rubinstein has personal and practical experience dealing with the families of artists after death in appraising a catalogue, providing for its use and sale, and consulting with different beneficiaries and co-executors on how to handle debts and proceeds.

FAQ:

I am a musician with an extensive catalogue.  How can I ensure my assets and royalties are protected for my family?

Because your royalties potentially represent multi-generational income streams, they could lead to disputes over your works and even your unpublished works, and create rife conditions for fracturing relationships between beneficiaries.  It is wise to work with an attorney to create a comprehensive inventory of your published and unpublished works and copyright registrations so that you can use that inventory to inform the construction of your estate plan and provide clear instructions for how these assets get managed or distributed after death. 

You might also consider setting up a trust to collect the royalties of your works, from which those royalties can be distributed to different beneficiaries.  A trust can make it easier to manage different income streams so that everything is centralized and can be distributed according to your wishes.

What possibilities should a good estate plan for musicians prepare for?

For musicians, recording artists, composers, and entertainers, your assets and royalties are just one aspect to consider.  Additional issues that might come up for your estate could include copyright disputes, name and likeness issues, and other intellectual property claims.  You will also need to consider how any decisions you make regarding your assets will be impacted by gift, estate, and generation-skipping taxes.

Lindsey Rubinstein and Expand Law can help you consider your options based on what you desire for your works and beneficiaries, including how to prevent the publication of certain of your unpublished works after death and how to provide for your beneficiaries for decades to come.