Attorney Biography

Harvey B. Wallace II focuses his practice in the areas of estate planning, business corporations (including compensation, employee benefits, and business succession planning), and charitable organizations. His estate planning practice includes the preparation and funding of flexible lifetime and post death trusts for asset management and disposition, creditor protection, and tax minimization. His practice also includes the design and preparation of premarital agreements, family partnerships, and charitable remainder trusts. He has formed, merged, and terminated charitable foundations, both private foundations and section 509(a)(3) supporting organizations, and gives administrative guidance to such organizations.

Mr. Wallace has formed and represents business corporations, partnerships, and limited liability companies, and has implemented employee compensation programs including employment contracts, nonqualified deferred compensation plans under section 409A, qualified plans, and welfare benefit plans. He has frequently served as a consultant regarding methods of optimizing plan benefits, IRAs, and Roth IRAs within an individual’s estate plan.Mr. Wallace has been an active member of the Real Property, Trust & Estate Law Section (RPTE) of the American Bar Association (ABA) and served as a member of the section’s supervisory council from 1998 through 2004 with oversight for the section’s employee benefits committees. He served as co-chairman of the section’s Committee on Groups and Substantive Committees from 2005 through 2009. In 2006, he became a RPTE liaison to the Joint Committee on Employee Benefits (the JCEB), a committee formed by six sections of the ABA.

Mr. Wallace was chairman of the JCEB for its 2010-2011 year. He is a charter member of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel (ACEBC).Mr. Wallace is a fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC) and has served as a member of ACTEC’s Employee Benefits in Estate Planning Committee since 2001 (serving as chairperson of that committee from 2011 – 2014) and ACTEC’s Charitable Planning and Exempt Organizations Committee since 2003. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the State Bar of Michigan and the Financial and Estate Planning Council of Metropolitan Detroit.

He has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America (Trust and Estates and Non-Profit/Charities Law categories), published by Woodward/White, Inc for 25 years.Mr. Wallace has lectured on estate planning and planning for employee benefits for a number of organizations including ACTEC, the Real Property, Trust, & Estate Law Section of the ABA, the Notre Dame Estate Planning Institute, the University of Denver Advanced Estate Planning Symposium, the University of Michigan’s Institute of Continuing Legal Education, the Financial and Estate Planning Council of Metropolitan Detroit, the Flint Estate Planning Council, and Greater Lansing Estate Planning Council.

He has been author of several articles published in Probate and Property (the magazine of the Real Property, Trust & Estate Law Section) and authored that magazine’s Employee Benefits Planning Update column for 15 years (from 1997 – 2012). He is also the co-author, with Frederick R. Keydel, of the University of Miami Estate Planning Institute article “Trust Drafting for the Unforeseeable” (2001) and “Estate Planning for Qualified Plan and IRA Death Benefits Under ERTA” published by Probate Notes (now ACTEC Journal) in 1982.