The plan is the point.
Estate design, wealth transfer, and fiduciary counsel for Texas families with appreciated assets. Flat fees, published. A single attorney, deliberately few clients.
Hartwell & Reese is a one-attorney Austin estate practice. Our work is the long-form kind: trust structures that hold across generations, tax-aware transfers of appreciated property, and the patient administration of what families have already built.
We left a larger firm three years ago because the larger-firm model does not produce the kind of plan a family should rely on. There are only so many estates an attorney can hold carefully at one time. We hold a small number of them.
Most plans fail in the funding, not the drafting.
Three things, done precisely.
The firm practices in three bounded areas. Everything outside those areas — divorce, injury, criminal, real estate transactions — we decline and refer.
Estate design
The foundational plan. Wills, revocable trusts, powers of attorney, advance directives. Drafted to Texas law and to the family’s actual tempo.
Wealth transfer
Irrevocable vehicles for moving appreciated assets out of the taxable estate while retaining control. Used selectively.
Post-death & fiduciary
Texas probate, trust administration, and representation of executors and trustees. The practical work of actually settling an estate.
Fewer clients. Longer relationships.
A meaningful estate plan is not a document. It is an ongoing relationship between the family and the counsel who understands how the pieces of the family’s wealth fit together. The document follows.
Our retainer assumes we will be in the estate for a decade. The engagement letter runs accordingly: a flat fee for the initial design, then an annual review that most firms do not offer and that most plans eventually need.
Published, flat, defensible.
A flat-fee plan for every standard engagement. Complex wealth work moves to engagement letter — with a range disclosed before a retainer is collected. No hourly surprise billing on foundational work.
A single hour to see if the shape of the engagement fits.
Thirty-minute intake call at no charge. Then a ninety-minute initial consultation, flat rate, applied toward the plan if we proceed. No retainer collected until the engagement letter is signed.