Estate Planning
We assist clients and their families to manage their financial and personal resources during lifetime, but also to transfer their assets during their lives or at death.
We strive to provide exceptional personal service to our clients in this very personal area of need. Our advice regularly involves family limited partnerships and other structures that provide a means to control family assets during an individual’s life, and continue to benefit family members after an individual’s death. Such recommendations often include current estate and gift tax planning opportunities, asset protection, marital property planning, and business succession plans. Our lawyers have experience in sophisticated estate and tax planning for clients whose estates consist of multiple types of assets, including oil and gas interests, real estate, stock and bond portfolios and closely held businesses.
Our lawyers can handle all your wealth transfer planning issues, including:
• Asset preservation planning (link to asset preservation page)
• Preparing simple to complex wills, codicils and disability planning documents
• Marital property planning, including pre- and post-marital agreements
• Decisions on tax and community property aspects of property division upon divorce
• Creating family partnerships for asset management and wealth planning
• Beneficiary designation planning for retirement benefits
• Probate of wills and handling contested and non-contested probate proceedings (link to probate and estate administration page)
Much effective wealth transfer planning involves the creative use of trusts. Our attorneys have substantial expertise in drafting a wide variety of trusts to achieve our clients’ objectives, including
• Living trusts
• Education trusts for minors
• Generation-skipping dynasty trusts
• Life insurance trusts
• Qualified personal residence trusts
• Personal injury settlement trusts
• Grantor retained annuity trusts
• Defective Grantor Trusts
• Charitable lead and remainder trusts
• Special needs trusts
• Trusts qualifying to hold S corporation stock, including QSST Trusts and ESBTs
Attorneys that practice this area of law (click on a name to view details):