Sullivan
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Biography

Doug represents individuals, family businesses, and banks and trust companies in trust and estate matters. His practice includes estate planning for moderate and high net worth individuals, representation of clients in estate and gift tax proceedings, as well as all other aspects of estate and trust administration. Doug also handles probate and other Surrogate's Court matters, including estate and trust litigation.

Doug’s clients include investment managers, real estate developers, business owners, cryptocurrency investors, tech entrepreneurs / founders, corporate executives and other professionals. He engages in estate and wealth transfer planning using sophisticated planning techniques, such as grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), qualified personal residence trusts (QPRTs), sales to multigenerational trusts, spousal lifetime access trusts (SLATs), charitable trusts, and limited liability companies and partnerships. Doug also drafts wills, revocable trusts, living wills and health care proxies, powers of attorney, insurance trusts, and other estate planning documentation.

Education
  • New York University School of Law (LL.M.)
    • Taxation
  • Hofstra University School of Law (J.D., cum laude)
  • Binghamton University (B.A., cum laude)
Bar & Court Admissions
  • New York
  • New Jersey
  • Connecticut
  • U.S. Tax Court
Investors Shouldn’t Miss This Often-Unseen Tax Code Opportunity
Lewis Greenwald, Douglas Schneidman, and Eric Rietveld contributed the article “Investors Shouldn’t Miss This Often-Unseen Tax Code Opportunity” to the Insights & Commentary section of Bloomberg Tax [sub req’d] on July 1, 2025. Considering possible provisions in The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that could further sweeten the deal for investors, Lew, Doug, and Eric highlight the powerful tax benefits of the frequently overlooked Qualified Small Business Stock Exclusion (QSBS) under Section 1202 of the tax code. Currently, the QSBS provision allows investors to exclude up to the greater of $10 million or 10 times their investment in QSBS from capital gains tax, provided certain outlined requirements are met. Emphasizing the existing value in this exclusion, they go on to examine how pending legislation, The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, could further augment the opportunity available to investors through allowing partial exclusions for QSBS held less than 5 years, raising the $10 million dollar exclusion to $15 million, and by increasing the corporate asset limit to $75 million.
Potential Tax Hikes Turn Estate and Wealth Planners Into 'Triage Center' for the Rich
Douglas Schneidman was quoted in the article, "Tax Hikes Turn Estate and Wealth Advisors Into 'Triage Center' for the Rich," [sub. req.] which was published in Financial Planning on October 12, 2021. In the article, Doug comments on the unclear effective date of potential tax increases on high net worth individuals: "[r]umblings from Congress and the estate planning community suggest the effective date of the grantor trust rule changes could be the date of introduction of the (tax) bill and not the date of enactment (the signing date)."