As many business owners know, business succession planning is a process, not a one-time ordeal. Succession planning is the activity through which organizations identify, train, and set up future leaders to take over when current management steps down. All companies should have some form of succession planning in place, but…
Estate planning doesn’t have to be overly complicated. While it’s important to make sure your plan is thorough, accurate, and thoughtful, you should also be able to draw up your documents without too much stress. To aid in that process, today we offer five tips that you can use to…
Probate is the process through which a court determines the validity of a person’s last will and testament. Once the court determines that a decedent’s will is valid and enforceable, the court approves the process of passing the person’s assets to his or her chosen beneficiaries. Probate can take anywhere…
Many of our clients come to us with questions about how to effectively pass on assets from one generation to the next. When done well, giving money to children and grandchildren can have benefits not only for the beneficiaries but also for the person gifting the money. On today’s blog,…
It is common to wonder when you should update your will and estate planning documents – after all, life circumstances are always changing, and these circumstances might bring important updates to your long-term plans. As a general rule, we typically advise clients to update their estate plans every three to…
Estate planning does not have to be unnecessarily complicated, especially if you have an experienced attorney to guide you through the process. While the details of every estate plan are important, and while it is crucial that your details are thoroughly reviewed, there are a few main elements to every…
Each state has slightly different taxes that it imposes when it comes to estate plans. In Texas, we are lucky that our state does not charge an estate tax, an inheritance tax, or a gift tax; even so, there are important things to know about each one. On today’s blog,…
It takes initiative and forethought to create an estate plan, and if you have taken the step to draft and finalize your plan, you are on the right track. One of the next important questions then becomes: when should you update the estate plan you’ve created? Today, we review some…
In Texas, to create an estate plan, you must have sufficient mental capacity to understand what is going into the document. If your estate plan is later going through a probate court, and the judge decides that you did not have the proper mental capacity when signing your will, your…
In Texas, there are several basic strategies you can implement to bypass probate. If you have been part of probate proceedings following a loved one’s death, you know that probate can be difficult to navigate and frustrating to deal with when you have other things on your mind. The process…