Estate Planning and Probate Attorneys in Jacksonville, FL

Planning for your family’s future requires a strategic and balanced approach that considers each individual’s long-term needs. Your legacy, business longevity, and future wealth goals will certainly be impacted by the decisions you make today. Making these arrangements is often a sensitive process that can benefit from experienced analysis of the implications of each estate planning tool available. Using estate planning tools like wills or trusts carries enormous benefits and ensures that the life you worked hard to build is one you will preserve for generations to come.

Creating a will with your attorney is a process that requires enormous trust and confidence in your attorney’s ability to create a document that will protect your family’s assets in the long-term. We work with clients and their trusted advisors to create estate planning documents that empower your fiduciaries, safeguard beneficiaries, minimize tax obligations while avoiding potential family or business disputes upon its execution. Our services encompass a big-picture approach to your succession goals, ensuring that all capital - business, real estate, retirement and invested assets - are evaluated and advantageously positioned for maximum wealth retention.

Adding to the complicated nature of estate planning for business owners and high-net-worth individuals, tax and business laws vary from state to state and the process of navigating these issues can quickly become overwhelming. Because many of our clients and their families are migrating to Florida from a different state, our experience in Florida estate planning law is crucial to reconciling and enhancing a current estate plan. Entrenched in our local financial services market and with extensive experience with our probate courts, our firm possesses a suite of valuable relationships with the area’s leading allied professionals to guide our clients through the estate planning process and the transition of wealth from one generation to the next.

One of the strategies we discuss with our clients when developing their estate plan in Florida is bypassing the probate process, which can add extensive complications to the ultimate passing of assets, in addition to adding to the cost. Analyzing our clients’ goals, assets, and ultimate vision for ownership, we work with them and their families to first assess whether a will or a revocable living trust might be a more appropriate strategy to pursue. In many cases, transferring ownership of your assets to a revocable living trust during your lifetime offers significant benefits by avoiding the time and expense of probate, and assuring that your assets are properly managed during your lifetime, even in the event of your incapacity. Our clients appreciate our firm’s ability to step outside the box by implementing proven strategies that take your specific goals and objectives into account.

Our wills and estate planning practice includes assisting clients with the following legal matters:

  • Analysis of clients’ total wealth
  • of most efficient estate planning instruments
  • Property transfer to spouses and children
  • Preparing wills
  • Providing for incapacity
  • Avoiding probate
  • Protection of minor children
  • Asset and creditor protection
  • Planned giving
  • Living wills
  • Powers of attorney
  • Healthcare surrogates
  • Protecting assets in a second marriage

Contact us for more information about our wills-related services.