Steve Higgins serves as Partner and Chair of Private Wealth Planning at Hargrove Firm. He leads the firm’s estate and wealth transfer planning practices with a focus on ultra-high-net-worth families, business owners, and clients preparing for a liquidity event. In this role, Steve works with clients, their wealth advisors, and family office professionals to execute strategies concerning gift-sale transactions with grantor trusts, domestic asset protection trusts, SLATs, ILITs, business succession planning, and directed trust and private trust company structures (among many others).
Before joining Hargrove Firm, Steve was a partner at Stinson LLP, where he helped open the firm’s first Florida office and led its Florida-based trust and probate practices. He previously served as a partner and Trusts & Estates Practice Leader at Bailey & Glasser LLP, and practiced at Shutts & Bowen LLP and Withers Bergman LLP, where he was mentored by multiple nationally recognized thought leaders. Steve is the principal author of the West Virginia Private Trust Company Act, the implementing regulations, and other progressive changes to the West Virginia Trust Code. Steve has extensive experience establishing licensed and unlicensed private trust companies. He has also utilized these structures not only to administer family trusts but also to develop creative solutions to challenges in trust administration and the management of multigenerational family wealth. He has been recognized by The Best Lawyers in America® for Taxation (2026) and was named a Florida Super Lawyers Rising Star (2022 and 2023), among other achievements.
Steve earned his LL.M. in Taxation from NYU Law, his J.D. with honors from UConn Law, and his undergraduate degrees in history and political science from UConn in Storrs, Connecticut. He is a member of the Florida, Connecticut, New York, West Virginia, and American Bar Associations and is admitted to practice in those four states.
Outside of work, Steve is a Tampa Bay Lightning fan, a vintage Corvette enthusiast, and a frequent visitor to New Orleans (whenever he and his wife aren’t at home with their two French Bulldogs in Clearwater, Florida).
