Estate Planning Services in Granite Shoals, TX
An estate plan is more than a will. It is a coordinated set of documents that tells the world — and the courts — what should happen to your home, your business, your accounts, and your loved ones when you can no longer speak for yourself.
More than a will. A complete framework.
Most people use the phrase estate planning to mean writing a will. A will is one piece of a real plan — and on its own, it is the piece most likely to leave your family in probate court for six to twelve months while the things you owned sit frozen. A proper estate plan in Texas is a coordinated framework: a revocable living trust that owns your assets, a pour-over will that catches anything the trust does not, durable powers of attorney for finances and healthcare, statutory advance directives, HIPAA authorizations, and current beneficiary designations on every retirement and life-insurance account.
We build that framework for Hill Country families one document at a time, and we make sure each one references the others so there are no contradictions for a court to resolve later. The goal is simple — when something happens to you, the people you love can keep living their lives instead of waiting on a judge in Burnet or Llano County.
Six documents, working as one binder.
An estate plan you can actually use is a physical (and digital) binder of documents that talk to each other. Each one has a different job. Together, they cover the three things your family will need to know: who is in charge if you cannot speak, where your assets go, and how to access them without a court order.
We hand every client a binder with their original signed documents, a digital backup, a one-page funding checklist, and a list of who should know where the binder lives. That last part — telling the right people the plan exists — is the difference between a plan that works and a plan that gathers dust in a fireproof box no one can find.
- Revocable living trust — The vehicle that holds your assets and skips probate.
- Pour-over will — A safety net that funnels stray assets into the trust.
- Durable financial POA — Names who pays your bills if you cannot.
- Medical POA + HIPAA — Names who speaks to your doctors.
- Directive to Physicians — Your treatment wishes in writing.
- Beneficiary alignment — Retirement and insurance designations updated to match.
Six moments a plan should already be in place.
Estate planning is not a one-time event. These are the life moments that almost always require the plan to exist or be revised — and the ones most families realize too late.
First child or grandchild
Guardianship and trustee provisions need to name the right person before they are needed. Before is the only time to choose.
Buying a business
Ownership outside a trust enters probate when you do. We move the interest into a trust at the same time you close.
Real estate purchase
Lake homes, ranches, and primary residences should be deeded into a trust at acquisition — not deeded out of probate later.
Diagnosis or surgery
If a doctor's appointment goes sideways, the financial and medical POAs decide whether your family has authority to act.
Retirement
Rollovers, Social Security elections, and account consolidation all touch beneficiary designations. The plan needs to keep up.
Marriage or divorce
Community-property rules in Texas reshape your estate the day the paperwork is signed. The plan should reshape with it.
Four advantages built into Texas law.
Estate planning in Texas is not the same as estate planning in California or New York. The state gives Hill Country families specific tools other states do not — and using them well is most of what we do.
Funding the trust is the plan.
Roughly half of the trusts we are asked to review by surviving family members were never actually funded. The grantor signed the trust, paid for it, put it in a drawer, and then never retitled their house, their bank accounts, or their LLC interests into it. When they passed, those assets went through probate exactly as if there were no trust at all. The trust did nothing because nothing was inside it.
Funding is the step where we deed your home into the trust, change the title on your investment accounts, retitle your vehicles where appropriate, update beneficiary designations on retirement and life insurance, and assign your LLC membership interests to the trust through a written assignment. None of that happens automatically. It is a discrete project, and it is the project that determines whether your plan is real.
We do not consider a plan complete until your funding worksheet is fully checked off. For most families that means three to six weeks of titling and signature work after the binder is delivered. For families with a business interest, a ranch, or rental property, it can take longer — and that is exactly why we schedule it instead of leaving it to chance.
After your plan is funded, we keep a master schedule of your assets in your client file. When you buy something new, sell something, or open a new account, you let us know and we update the schedule. Plans drift the moment you stop watching them. Ours do not.
What Hill Country families ask us first.
For a standard family estate plan with a trust, two POAs, and advance directives, the working timeline is three to five weeks. Week one is the free consultation and information gathering. Weeks two and three are document drafting and review. Week four is the signing meeting. Weeks five and six are funding, where we retitle assets into the trust. Complex situations — business interests, multiple properties, blended families — can run six to eight weeks.
Usually one Texas-based plan is enough if the property in another state can be moved into the same trust. A trust is portable across states. The exception is real estate, which has to be deeded individually into the trust state by state — but the trust itself does not need to be duplicated. We handle the out-of-state deeds during funding.
Your trust still works. Your POAs and advance directives may need to be reissued on the destination state's statutory forms because hospitals and banks prefer to see in-state documents. We recommend a one-time review with a planner in the new state to confirm everything still does what you intended.
Every three to five years as a default, and immediately after any life event — marriage, divorce, birth, death of a named trustee, sale of a business, large real-estate purchase, move out of state, or significant change in net worth. We schedule a complimentary check-in every three years to make sure nothing has drifted.
Flat fee, quoted in writing after the free consultation, with funding included. We do not bill hourly for estate planning work because hourly billing punishes the families with the most complicated situations — the ones who need the plan most.
Plans rarely use just one tool.
Most plans combine more than one service. These pair naturally with what you are reading about.
Highland Lakes and Hill Country coverage.
We work with families across central Texas. Click your town for local details.
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