Estate Planning and Probate Department

The Firm strives to be a leader in innovative estate planning.  The estate planning and probate attorneys offer comprehensive, cost efficient, and personalized services that provide legal solutions for individuals and their families concerning the accumulation, management, preservation, and transfer of wealth. 

Our mission is to use estate planning tools to fulfill each client's goals while eliminating or minimizing estate taxes and reducing expenses to the maximum extent possible.  The Firm works as a team with accountants, life insurance agents, certified financial planners, investment advisors, and other professionals to develop an overall plan that works to achieve a family objectives, financial and otherwise, while addressing a sensitivity to the family's emotional needs as well.  We are particularly sensitive to the needs of our clients in maintaining privacy and confidentiality.

	Our services regarding wealth-planning span the full range of planning matters, from customized will and trust agreements to complex business structuring and the creation of charitable entities.  Our services include:
	Preparing sophisticated wills, long-term trusts and other arrangements designed to control property and reduce taxes over several generations.
	Planning involving the restructuring of farms, large real estate and timber holdings, businesses and related arrangements to reduce taxation of family interests and to assure that these interests stay within the family, (i.e. Family Limited Partnerships and Limited Liability Companies).
	Planning designed to meet the liquidity needs of an estate after a principal owner's death in order to support a surviving spouse or other family members and defray taxes.  Such plans, for example, anticipate utilization of the tax deferral and reduced valuation provisions of federal tax law and employ sophisticated life insurance ownership arrangements.
	Planning designed to mitigate the tax problems presented by rapidly appreciating property, (i.e. Discounting and Intentionally Defective Grantor Trusts).
	Planning designed to assist clients with life changes such as prenuptial agreements.
	Charitable planning for families using funds that would otherwise have to be paid to federal and state governmental taxing authorities.  Such plans include, for example, family foundations and charitable trusts benefiting both family members and charity.
	Representing and counseling professional, executives, entrepreneurs, and high-income individuals on a variety of tax and non-tax matters.
	Assisting individual foreign clients, both resident and nonresident, with their estate planning needs, associating lawyers in other states when needed.
	Handling will contests and litigation seeking the proper interpretation of wills and trusts with support from the Firm's litigation attorneys.

The Firm also strives to be a leader in the administration of decedent’s estates, including providing complicated post-death tax planning and advising accountants and personal representatives in the preparation of federal estate tax returns.  In addition, the Firm handles audits and other controversies with the Internal Revenue Service in matters involving gift transfers, business valuations, property appraisals, trusts and estates.

Our Firm has served as lecturers at numerous continuing education programs for lawyers and accountants.  We are also consulted by lawyers, accountants, trust departments, insurance agents, financial planners, and others for guidance in the areas of wills, trusts, and estates, estate tax, and income taxation of trusts and estates.  We have given estate planning seminars for the following entities:

Accounting Firms:

Bevis, Eberhart, Browning, Walker & Stewart, P.C. (C.P.A.)

Way, Ray, Shelton & Co., P.C. (C.P.A.)

Investment Firms and Insurance Companies:

Alabama Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors

Edward Jones Investments

Merrill Lynch

MetLife Financial Services

Morgan Keegan

Morgan Stanley Dean Witter

Salomon Smith Barney

State Farm Life Insurance Companies (Agent University)

Sterne, Agee & Leach Group Company

USPA & IRA

Banking Institutions

First Federal Bank

Continuing Education

Alabama Institute of Continuing Legal Education

Lorman Education Services

National Business Institute

Troy State University of Dothan

Non-Profit Entities

The Community Foundation of Southeast Alabama

Southeast Alabama Medical Center (Benefits Specialist Group)