Estate Planning & Trust Services in Marble Falls, TX
Marble Falls sits at the heart of the Highland Lakes — and at the heart of what we do. Old Oak Square families, Flat Creek Estates newcomers, multi-generational ranching households, and lake-home retirees all come through our office for the same reason: they have built something worth protecting.
Built for the Highland Lakes families we have served since 2009.
Marble Falls is the closest thing the Highland Lakes have to a working downtown. Main Street still anchors the commercial life of the region — its restaurants, its banks, its medical practices, and the families who have run businesses along it for two and three generations. The town sits where Lake Marble Falls collects the Colorado below the LBJ dam, and the local economy reflects that geography: tourism and lake recreation on one side, granite and limestone industry on the other, and an increasingly affluent retiree and second-home population layered on top.
We have been building estate plans for Marble Falls families since 2009, and the conversations have changed in interesting ways across that time. Fifteen years ago, the typical client owned a home on or near the lake, had a small business, and wanted to make sure the kids would not have to deal with probate. Today the conversation is more often about generational wealth — protecting a successful business from a future lawsuit, structuring a lake home for grandchildren who do not live in Texas yet, planning the sale of a family ranch that has been in the same name since the 1950s. The fundamentals are the same. The stakes have gotten bigger.
From granite town to lake-centered economy.
Marble Falls was platted in 1887 by Adam Rankin Johnson, a Confederate brigadier general who envisioned a city built around the natural granite falls on the Colorado River — falls that gave the town its name long before they were submerged by Lake Marble Falls when the dam was built in 1951. The granite industry came first, and Marble Falls granite famously trims the Texas State Capitol in Austin. Limestone followed, and limestone quarrying remains a meaningful part of the regional economy today.
The lake transformed everything. By the 1970s, Marble Falls was a tourism town. By the 1990s, it was a retirement town. By the 2010s, it was both — and also a working town with one of the busiest small-town hospitals in central Texas, a school district that serves families across western Burnet County, and a Main Street that punches well above its weight commercially. The town's population now sits over ten thousand, with a much larger trade area that pulls from the surrounding rural ZIP codes whenever anyone needs a doctor, a contractor, or a planner.
For estate planning specifically, Marble Falls's evolution matters because the typical client portfolio has expanded along with the town. The simple plan that worked in 2005 — a will, maybe a basic trust, name the kids — is not enough for a family that now owns a lake home, a small business, a stake in the family land outside Llano, and grandchildren in three states. The work scales with the wealth, and Marble Falls families need plans built for what they actually own today, not for what they owned twenty years ago.
Marble Falls, TX
We meet Marble Falls clients in person at our Granite Shoals service area (15 minutes east on HWY 1431) or at your home or business when it is more convenient.
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The three conversations we have most often.
Almost every Marble Falls family who calls us has the same first question, in some form: how do we keep our kids out of probate when we are gone? The answer for most is a properly funded living trust paired with a pour-over will and a coordinated set of POAs. We work through the funding piece carefully because Marble Falls clients usually own a primary home, often a lake home, sometimes investment property, and assets at two or three different financial institutions. Every piece needs to be retitled into the trust, and we do that work alongside you.
The second conversation, especially with business-owning families, is about asset protection. Marble Falls has a strong small-business community — restaurants, contractors, professional services — and most of those owners have personal guarantees on commercial loans, signed leases, and exposure to lawsuits arising from their business activity. Layered protection (LLCs around liability-generating assets, trusts above the LLCs, irrevocable layers for legacy assets) is the standard answer.
The third conversation, increasingly common with our older clients, is about long-term care. Texas does not have a state estate tax, but Texas also has nursing care costs that average $7,000 a month and can hit $10,000+ on the high end. We talk about whether an irrevocable Medicaid asset protection trust makes sense — and when. The five-year look-back means this conversation has to happen years before care is needed.
- Keep the kids out of probate — Funded living trust is the most reliable answer.
- Protect the business and the family separately — Layered LLCs, trust ownership, insurance coordination.
- Plan for long-term care years in advance — Five-year Medicaid look-back means this is not a same-day decision.
- Coordinate with out-of-state heirs — Lake homes, vacation property, and traveling kids all factor in.
Everything we build, available locally.
Every service below is available to Marble Falls clients. Most plans combine two or three of them into a single coordinated structure.
Estate Planning
Full coordinated plans with trust, will, POAs, and directives.
Living Trusts
Revocable trusts that skip Burnet County probate.
Irrevocable Trusts
Maximum protection for legacy and Medicaid planning.
Business Trusts
Trust-owned LLC structures for Marble Falls business owners.
Asset Protection
Layered defense against lawsuits and creditors.
Wills
Texas statutory wills with self-proving affidavits.
What Marble Falls families ask before we meet.
We meet clients in person throughout the Highland Lakes — at our Granite Shoals service area, at your home, at your business, or at a quiet meeting room in Marble Falls when that works best. The first consultation is free and typically runs sixty to ninety minutes. We have served Marble Falls families for more than fifteen years and the drive is short.
Burnet County. The Burnet County Court at Law sits in the city of Burnet, about twenty minutes north of Marble Falls. It is a responsive court with a manageable docket, but the goal of most of our planning is to avoid probate entirely through a properly funded trust — which means your family never has to make the trip.
The home is deeded into your trust via a recorded warranty deed filed with the Burnet County Clerk. We prepare the deed, walk through the homestead-exemption preservation language, and file it on your behalf. Your lender and your homeowner's insurance carrier are notified, both of which are routine. The transfer does not trigger a tax event or affect your property-tax assessment.
Your trust travels with you across state lines — a Texas trust is generally recognized in every state. Your POAs and healthcare directives may need to be reissued on the destination state's statutory forms because hospitals and banks prefer in-state documents. If you spend significant time elsewhere, we can prepare matching documents for both states during the same engagement.
Every service we offer, available in Marble Falls.
The chips below link to the full service pages. Most clients combine two or three services into a single plan.
Communities near Marble Falls we also serve.
These are the closest cities in our coverage map — each with its own dedicated planning page.
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