Wills, trusts, and business succession planning for Dallas-Fort Worth families and business owners. Drafted by an attorney who also litigates estates that were not planned well.
Most people put this off. It isn't urgent, it involves thinking about uncomfortable things, and there is always something more pressing. Then something happens, and the people you leave behind are the ones who have to work out what you would have wanted.
That part I see from the other side. Heirs who have to guess. A business with no succession plan and owners who disagree about everything. A trust written loosely enough that a court has to decide what it means. Those cases take years, and the legal fees come out of the estate itself. What you left behind gets smaller while the family argues over it.
Good planning is not complicated for most people. It is a set of decisions, documented clearly, in a form that holds up. The work is in making those decisions carefully and writing them so they don't leave room for argument later.
A will directs where your property goes, names the person who will administer your estate, and, if you have minor children, designates who raises them. Texas has specific requirements for execution, and a will that doesn't meet them can be challenged. I draft wills that say what you mean and are built to withstand a challenge.
A properly drafted and funded trust keeps your estate out of probate, keeps your affairs private, and gives you control over how and when assets pass to your beneficiaries. Trusts are particularly useful when there is real estate in more than one state, a business interest, or a beneficiary who shouldn't receive a large sum all at once.
If you own a business, what happens to it is the single largest question in your estate. Who takes over, how the value gets divided among heirs who aren't all involved in the company, how a buy-sell agreement is funded, whether the business survives a transition at all. This is where my business litigation work and my estate work meet, and it's the planning I find most clients have neglected.
A financial power of attorney lets someone you trust handle your affairs if you can't. Paying bills, managing accounts, dealing with property. Without one, your family may need a court-appointed guardianship to do things that should be routine. It's a short document that prevents an expensive problem.
Medical powers of attorney, directives to physicians, and HIPAA authorizations determine who makes decisions about your care and who is allowed to receive information about your condition. These are the documents families most often wish they had, at the worst possible moment.
An estate plan reflects your life at the moment it was signed. A marriage, a divorce, a new child or grandchild, a business sale, a move to Texas from another state. Any of these can make an existing plan wrong or unenforceable. If it's been years since you looked at yours, that review is worth an hour.
I also handle estate, probate, and trust litigation. Will contests, trustee disputes, disagreements among heirs over what a document was supposed to mean. That means I have read estate plans in the worst possible context: after someone died, with a family in conflict and a judge deciding what the words on the page require.
That experience changes how you draft. I know which provisions get attacked, which ambiguities turn into long lawsuits, which trustee powers cause problems, and where plans fail because nobody funded the trust after signing it. Most estate planning attorneys never find out what happens to their documents once they are signed. I do.
The business side matters more than people expect. When an estate includes a company, commercial property, or partnership interests, the planning question is really a business question. Valuation, control, who is in and who is out. Those are the same issues I litigate for business clients.
If you're dealing with a dispute over an estate that already exists, that is a different matter. See estate, probate & trust litigation.
Tell me about your situation and I'll walk you through what you actually need, and what you don't.