Post-death administration and fiduciary counsel.

The estate plan survives or fails in the administration. The attorney who drafted it is frequently not the attorney who settles it — and the settlement attorney is often encountering the drafting errors, the unfunded trusts, and the misaligned beneficiary designations for the first time under time pressure. The practice’s post-death work is most often the work of quietly cleaning up what was never finished on the front end, often by a prior firm.

Texas is an independent-administration jurisdiction by default, which means that a well-drafted will keeps the estate out of the court’s hand-holding for most of the process. Half of the wills we see as post-death counsel were not drafted with that preference in mind. The administration takes longer and costs more as a consequence.

Trust administration — as distinct from probate — is its own discipline. A trustee who is a family member and not a professional fiduciary carries personal liability for decisions made in that role, and frequently does not know it until year two of the administration. We advise trustees throughout. Where the administration is contested, we either represent the trustee through the contest or — more often — refer it out to litigation counsel we trust while remaining in the role of fiduciary advisor.

We coordinate the Form 706 estate-tax filing with the family’s tax preparer, and the Form 1041 fiduciary income tax filings across the life of the trust. Coordination, again: the plans that succeed are the plans where the attorney, the CPA, and the financial advisor actually talk to each other.