Planning by Situation
Explore how family structure, assets, business ownership, disability, digital property, charity, and life stage change the questions to ask.
Every guide opens with a simple explanation, then goes deeper into mechanics, tradeoffs, examples, state differences and sources.
Guides in this section
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Planning for Minor Children
Parents can nominate guardians and design property management for minors, but a court generally makes the appointment based on governing law and the child's interests.
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Business Succession Planning
Business succession coordinates voting control, economics, leadership, buy-sell terms, valuation, liquidity, key relationships, and the owner's personal estate plan before incapacity, retirement, or death.
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Charitable Estate Planning
Charitable planning can use direct gifts, beneficiary designations, donor-advised funds, split-interest trusts, or private foundations, each with different control, timing, valuation, administration, and tax effects.
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Estate Planning for Blended Families
Blended-family planning must reconcile a current partner's security with intended inheritances for children and other beneficiaries while accounting for spousal rights, ownership, beneficiary forms, and fiduciary conflicts.
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Estate Planning for Real Estate Investors
Real-estate planning coordinates title, management authority, debt, insurance, entity agreements, tax basis, liquidity, and property in multiple jurisdictions.
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Estate Planning for Unmarried Partners
Unmarried partners often lack the default inheritance, medical priority, tax, and property rights available to spouses, so coordinated documents and title are especially important.
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Family Governance and Multigenerational Planning
Family governance uses agreed decision processes, education, communication, and role clarity to help a long-term plan function across people and generations; it complements rather than replaces legal documents.
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Family-Office and Multigenerational Coordination
Family-office coordination creates one operating map for legal documents, tax work, investments, entities, real estate, insurance, philanthropy, governance, cybersecurity, and fiduciary administration while preserving each professional's actual authority and responsibility.
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Incapacity Planning
Incapacity planning creates a coordinated decision system for finances, health care, living arrangements, business, dependents, and information access if a person cannot act independently.
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Life Insurance and Estate Planning
Life insurance can provide liquidity and support, but ownership, insured, beneficiary, transfer timing, policy performance, and incidents of ownership affect estate and tax results.
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Planning for a Beneficiary With Disabilities
Special-needs planning coordinates quality of life, decision support, family resources, trusts, beneficiary designations, and public-benefit rules without assuming every person or program has the same eligibility rules.
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Preparing Heirs and Educating Beneficiaries
Preparing heirs is a staged education and communication process that helps beneficiaries understand stewardship, fiduciary roles, financial decision-making, family enterprises, philanthropy, and where to seek help without promising a distribution or replacing the governing documents.
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Professional Estate-Planning Research Workflow
A professional estate-planning workflow converts a client's objectives and verified facts into an issue map, assigns each issue to the right discipline, records dated primary authority and assumptions, coordinates implementation, and schedules post-signing validation and review.
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Retirement Accounts in an Estate Plan
Retirement accounts pass under plan and beneficiary rules, and inherited-distribution tax rules make beneficiary choice, trust drafting, and form accuracy especially important.
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Trustee Administration and Education Center
Trustee administration is the documented process of accepting authority, reading the governing instrument and law, protecting and investing trust property, evaluating distributions, communicating as required, keeping accounts, coordinating tax work, and planning for succession.
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What to Do After a Death
The first priorities are people, safety, property, and reliable information: obtain required certificates, locate documents, secure assets, notify appropriate institutions, and identify who has legal authority before moving money or distributing property.