Griffin & Matthews provides a full range of estate planning and probate services to maximize and PROTECT our clients' families and wealth. We draft everything from simple wills to restructures of family businesses for management, continuity and savings for future generations. We also help individual and corporate executors and trustees administer decedents' estates and trusts, both efficiently and cost-effectively. We provide counsel on the most SENSITIVE personal family issues, from those involving marital disputes and succession planning to executive compensation and retirement plans. We have helped our clients to efficiently transfer millions of dollars to their families.
We advise individual clients on:
- Wealth transfers that use creative, individualized lifetime vehicles to minimize income, estate and generation-skipping taxes
- Premarital agreements, estate and probate planning (including insurance and property ownership), asset PRESERVATION, and estate and trust administration
- Lifetime gifts that minimize gift and estate taxation, and achieve personal and family goals
- General powers of attorney, designations of guardian, directives to physicians ("living wills") and powers of attorney relating to health care decisions
- Lifetime revocable and irrevocable TRUSTS that make tax-efficient gifts, facilitate asset management and avoid guardianship if the client is incapacitated, avoid lengthy state court probate, and protect assets from creditors
- Formation of vehicles that lower estate TAX values and defer estate tax payment on farm and ranch property
- Charitable lifetime and testamentary gifts, including the establishment of private foundations, charitable trusts and endowments
We advise corporations, family held companies and business executives on:
- Restructuring family businesses to reduce income and succession taxes
- SUCCESSION and inheritance plans that defer significant estate taxes
- Various forms of charitable planned giving
- Proper employee benefit and life insurance beneficiary designations that minimize income and estate tax burdens, while satisfying federal laws regarding qualified plans
- How relocation applies new community property systems and local regulation to the administration of corporate executives' estates
Probate and Fiduciary Services
At Griffin & Matthews, we are conscious and respectful of the emotional and stressful time following the loss of a loved one. We are committed to doing everything possible to facilitate a quick, COMPREHENSIVE probate process and fulfillment of fiduciary responsibility. We handle the following probate and fiduciary matters, and more:
- Representation of Executors, Administrators, and Trustees
- Probate of the decedent's will and filing of other necessary court documents, or if there was no will, we wind-up the decedent's affairs as simply as possible
- Dependent or Independent Administrations
- Muniment of Title procedure, Small Estates, and Affidavit of Heirship procedures when applicable
- Creditors' claims
- Planning for the decedent's estate and beneficiaries
- Asset TRANSFERS to beneficiaries, in addition to winding up, or negotiating transfers in closely held businesses
- Administration of testamentary and lifetime trusts, in addition to providing advice to trustees and beneficiaries
- Probate related mediation and litigation, in addition to will contests, will and trust construction, termination of trusts, resignation or removal of trustees, and litigation arising out of the administration of estates and trusts
- Guardianships of minors and those who are incapacitated
- Provision of fiduciary law and trust administration advice to corporate and individual fiduciaries
To speak with the attorneys at Griffin & Matthews regarding the legal concerns that affect your family, call us at 281-870-1124 or contact us online to schedule a confidential consultation.
