Thornton, William G.

Mr. Thomas focuses his practice in the areas of financial transactions, acquisitions, corporate, charity, wills, trusts, and estate planning law. His clients include two Catholic monasteries and a parish, various businesses, charities, and lenders, as well as individuals. Examples of transactions in which Mr. Thomas participated include:

• Handling the sale of a manufacturing company's assets.
• Spinning off oil and gas properties held by a corporation to a partnership comprised of its shareholders.
• Structuring real estate term loans as investments by a major pension fund.
• Structuring secured and unsecured term and revolving loans to operating companies.
• Structuring intra-family sales of closely-held companies and family businesses.
• Handling numerous estate plans with substantial tax savings and significant wealth transfers to heirs including charitable lead trusts, charitable remainder trusts, dynasty trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, family limited partnerships, and other estate planning strategies.

Mr. Thomas is a member of the American Bar Association and the Idaho State Bar. He is a member of the Tax, Business and Corporate Law Sections of both bars. In 1997 and 2003, he served as a member of the Idaho State Bar Committee to revise the Idaho Corporate Code. Mr. Thomas served a number of charities in recent years, including the Morrison Center Endowment Foundation, Inc., the Harry W. Morrison Foundation, Inc., the Morrison Center Performing Arts Fund, Inc., the Idaho Public Television Foundation, Inc., and FUNDSY, Inc. From 2004 to 2007, Mr. Thomas was Chairman of the Morrison Center Board of Governors, where he has served as a board member since 1999. He has also served as a former director and president of the Catholic Schools Foundation of the Sacred Heart, Inc. He was a member of the St. Mary's School Board and was President of St. Mary's Pastoral Council. Mr. Thomas was the incorporator and a director of Trust & Estate Professionals of Idaho, Inc., a non-profit corporation devoted to improving Idaho's laws of trusts, estates, wills, conservatorships and guardians.

Mr. Thomas received his law degree from the University of Idaho College of Law in 1982. After graduating from Yale College in 1974 with a B.A. in English, Mr. Thomas was a loan officer and trust officer for Idaho First National Bank.