Nancy G. Henderson is a founding partner and managing partner of Henderson, Caverly & Pum LLP, Chair of the Estate Planning Group, and a member of the Trust Administration & Probate Group.
Ms. Henderson is a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), where she has served on the Program Committee. She served a three-year term on the California State Bar Estate Planning Law Advisory Commission, which wrote and graded the legal specialist exam in Estate Planning, Probate and Trust Law. From 1996 through 1999, Ms. Henderson served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Taxation Section of the California State Bar. Ms. Henderson is a member of the California Lawyers Association (Taxation and Trusts and Estates Sections) and the San Diego County Bar Association (Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law Section and the Taxation Law Section).
Ms. Henderson is listed in Southern California Super Lawyers – San Diego (2008-present) and was named by Worth Magazine as one of the nation’s Top 100 Attorneys (2008-2009). Since 2018, Ms. Henderson has been recognized by The Best Lawyers in America® for work in Nonprofit / Charities Law, Tax Law, and Trusts and Estates. Ms. Henderson received the Lawyer of the Year award from The Best Lawyers in America® in 2022 and 2024 for work in Nonprofit / Charities Law and in 2023 for work in Tax Law. Ms. Henderson was selected as a 2024 Women of Influence in Law by the San Diego Business Journal.
Ms. Henderson obtained her law degree in 1991 from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, where she graduated in the top 10% of her class and was elected to the Order of the Coif. In 1981, she obtained her bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Duke University.
Ms. Henderson has spoken and written extensively on estate, gift and income tax planning, and has presented significant outlines on numerous estate and charitable planning subjects through various prestigious organizations, including the University of Miami Institute on Estate Planning (the Heckerling Institute), ALI-CLE (various programs), ACTEC, the Notre Dame Estate Planning Institute, the Kasner Symposium, the Southern California Tax and Estate Planning Forum, the Hawaii Tax Institute, the USC Tax Institute, the American Bar Association, the California State Bar, the Washington State Bar and various estate planning councils around the country. Ms. Henderson served for seven years as a co-Chair ALI-CLE’s week-long program, Estate Planning in Depth, which is held annually at the University of Wisconsin (Madison).
Some of the subjects on which Ms. Henderson has written and spoken include:
- Planning with Family Entities After Powell;
- Drafting and Administering Buy-Sell Agreements for Family-Owned Entities;
- Rejuvenating Stale Trusts with Trust-to-Trust Transfers;
- Estate Planning in an Age of Higher Income Taxes and Lower Transfer Taxes;
- Planning for the Administration of Trusts with “Carrot and Stick” Provisions (Slicing and Dicing Trustees’ Duties and Responsibilities);
- What You Thought You Knew about Crummey Powers;
- Sophisticated Uses of the Gift Tax Annual Exclusion;
- Planning for the Preservation of Cherished Family Properties;
- Planning with Qualified Personal Residence Trusts (QPRTs);
- The Use and Taxation of Qualified Conservation Contributions;
- Family Limited Partnerships in Estate Planning;
- Estate Planning Issues for Family Law Practitioners;
- Disclaimers in Estate Planning and Postmortem Administration;
- Planning for the Benefits and Burdens of Inherited Wealth with Incentives Trusts;
- Estate Planning for Real Estate Investors;
- California Taxation of Non-California Situs Trusts;
- Estate Planning for Same-Sex and Other Non-Traditional Couples;
- Common Drafting Oversights that Complicate Estate Administration;
- Estate Planning for Siblings, Cousins, and Other “Collateral” Relatives;
- Drafting the Dispositive Provisions of Wills and Trusts;
- The Corporate Transparency Act: Coming Soon To a Family-Owned Entity Near You!; and
- It’s 2024 and the CTA is Here So Let’s Get Our [CT]Act Together!
