Most people understand that estate planning is something they should do. Very few actually do it or do it well. The result is that families and businesses are left to navigate probate, tax exposure, and ownership transitions during some of the most difficult circumstances they will ever face, without any of the structures that would have made those circumstances manageable.
Estate planning at Montgomery Legal is not a stack of standard forms. It is a coordinated legal and financial strategy that accounts for what you own, how you own it, what you owe, who you want to receive it, when you want them to receive it, and what the tax consequences of each choice are. Because your advisor is both an attorney and a CPA, the legal documents and the tax strategy are developed together not as separate engagements handed off between professionals.
For business owners, this integration is especially important. A will or trust that doesn't account for your business ownership structure, your buy-sell agreement, your entity's governing documents, and your income tax basis in the business can create significant problems for your family and your business partners. We build plans where every piece works with the others.
Core Estate Planning Documents
A complete estate plan is built from several coordinated documents. Each serves a distinct purpose and gaps between them are where plans fail. Below is a plain-language overview of what each document does and why it matters.
Last Will and Testament
Directs how your property is distributed after death, names an executor to administer your estate, and critically for parents designates a guardian for minor children. A will goes through probate in Texas, which is generally a streamlined process, but assets transferred by will become part of the public record.
Revocable Living Trust
Holds your assets during your lifetime and distributes them according to your instructions after death without probate. A living trust keeps your estate private, avoids court delays, and allows for more precise control over how and when beneficiaries receive assets. Particularly valuable for business owners and those with real estate in multiple states.
Durable Power of Attorney
Authorizes a person you choose to manage your financial affairs if you become incapacitated paying bills, managing investments, handling real estate and business transactions. Without a DPOA, a court-supervised guardianship may be required, which is costly, public, and slow. The "durable" designation means it remains valid even if you lose capacity.
Medical Power of Attorney
Designates a healthcare agent to make medical decisions on your behalf if you are unable to do so. Works alongside your Directive to Physicians (living will) to ensure your medical wishes are known and that someone you trust has the legal authority to act on them.
Directive to Physicians
Also called an advance directive or living will. Documents your wishes regarding life-sustaining treatment whether you want CPR, mechanical ventilation, feeding tubes, or other interventions in specific medical circumstances. Ensures your preferences govern those decisions, not default hospital protocols.
Beneficiary Designations & Titling
Retirement accounts, life insurance, and jointly titled property pass outside your will or trust entirely governed by beneficiary designations and how assets are titled. A well-drafted estate plan that ignores these transfers is incomplete. We review and align all beneficiary designations with your overall plan as part of every engagement.
Trusts: When and Why
A trust is a legal arrangement in which assets are held by one party (the trustee) for the benefit of another (the beneficiary), according to terms you set in the trust document. Trusts are not exclusively for the wealthy they are planning tools that solve specific problems, and whether you need one depends on your goals, your assets, and who you are leaving things to.
The revocable living trust is the most widely used it avoids probate, provides privacy, and allows you to control the terms of distribution. But there are a range of irrevocable trust structures that serve specific estate tax, asset protection, and charitable objectives. Below is an overview of the trusts most relevant to the clients we serve.
Revocable Living Trust
- Avoids probate assets pass directly to beneficiaries
- Keeps estate distribution private
- Can be amended or revoked during your lifetime
- Provides seamless management if you become incapacitated
- Does not provide estate tax or asset protection benefits
Irrevocable Trusts
- Assets removed from taxable estate reduces federal estate tax
- Can provide creditor and divorce protection for beneficiaries
- Generally cannot be amended after funding
- Includes SLATs, ILITs, GRATs, QPRTs, and CRTs
- Best evaluated while the federal exemption remains at its elevated level
Testamentary Trusts
- Created inside your will comes into existence at death
- Holds assets for minor or young beneficiaries until a set age
- Prevents a large inheritance from being delivered to an 18-year-old without structure
- Goes through probate before being funded
Special Needs Trusts
- Provides for a beneficiary with a disability without disqualifying them from government benefits
- Supplements rather than replaces Medicaid and SSI coverage
- Critical planning tool for families with a special needs family member
- Requires careful drafting to maintain benefits eligibility
Estate and Gift Tax Planning
The federal estate tax applies to estates above the applicable exemption amount currently $15 million per individual, but scheduled to revert to approximately half that amount after 2026 unless Congress acts. For business owners whose primary asset is the equity in a closely held company, the value of that business may place the estate above the threshold even if cash-on-hand is limited, creating a tax liability that survivors must pay within nine months of death.
Because Montgomery Legal's advisor is a CPA as well as an attorney, tax planning is not a separate engagement it is woven into every estate plan we build. The goal is to transfer as much wealth as possible to the people and causes you care about, and as little as possible to the IRS, using the tools Congress has made available.
Annual Gift Exclusion
Each year, you can give up to $19,000 per recipient (2026) without filing a gift tax return or using any of your lifetime exemption. Systematic gifting over time including to trusts is one of the simplest and most effective wealth transfer strategies.
Lifetime Exemption Planning
The current elevated exemption is a use-it-or-lose-it opportunity for larger estates. Completed transfers are locked in, even if the exemption is later reduced. We model the after-tax impact of using exemption now vs. holding.
Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT)
Life insurance proceeds are includable in your taxable estate if you own the policy. An ILIT holds the policy outside your estate, ensuring the death benefit reaches beneficiaries free of estate tax often used to provide liquidity to pay estate taxes on illiquid business assets.
Grantor Retained Annuity Trust (GRAT)
A technique for transferring appreciation in assets including business interests to heirs with little or no gift tax cost. Effective in low-interest-rate environments and for assets with high growth potential, such as business equity approaching a liquidity event.
Qualified Personal Residence Trust (QPRT)
Transfers your home to heirs at a reduced gift tax value by retaining the right to live there for a fixed term. At the end of the term, ownership transfers to beneficiaries removing the full value of the residence from your taxable estate.
Charitable Giving Strategies
Charitable Remainder Trusts (CRTs), Donor-Advised Funds, and direct charitable bequests can achieve both income tax and estate tax savings while fulfilling philanthropic goals. Particularly effective for highly appreciated assets, including business interests.
Note on Federal Estate Tax Changes for 2026: Federal estate and gift tax laws changed significantly in 2025. Beginning in 2026, the federal estate and gift tax exemption is $15 million per individual ($30 million for many married couples with proper planning), indexed for inflation in future years. The previously scheduled reduction of the exemption amount after December 31, 2025, was eliminated by federal legislation. While fewer estates will be subject to federal estate taxes under the current law, proactive estate planning remains essential to preserve wealth, minimize taxes, and ensure your assets are distributed according to your wishes. High-net-worth individuals and families should periodically review their estate plans to account for changes in tax laws, asset values, and family circumstances.
Business Succession Planning
For business owners, estate planning and business succession planning are inseparable. Your business interest is likely your largest asset and it is also an asset that cannot simply be handed to a beneficiary the way a bank account can. The business has employees, customers, contracts, and operational dependencies. It may have co-owners with their own interests and rights. It may require active management that your heirs are not equipped or willing to provide.
A business succession plan answers the questions your estate plan alone cannot: Who runs the business if something happens to you? What happens to your co-owners' interests? How is the business valued for transfer purposes? How is the estate tax paid if the business is illiquid? What happens to employees, customers, and contracts during the transition?
What a business succession plan addresses
- Ownership transfer how your business interest passes and to whom, with mechanisms for funding the transfer
- Buy-sell agreement review and alignment ensuring your buy-sell provisions work with your estate plan, not against it
- Valuation methodology establishing a defensible valuation method in advance, rather than leaving it to be contested after death
- Liquidity planning ensuring estate taxes can be paid without forcing a distressed sale of the business (life insurance, installment payment elections under §6166)
- Management succession identifying and preparing the person or team who will lead the business through the transition
- Family equity transfers gifting minority interests over time using valuation discounts for lack of control and marketability to reduce taxable estate
- Step-up in basis planning maximizing the income tax basis step-up your heirs receive on appreciated business interests at death
Who Needs an Estate Plan and When
Estate planning is not a wealth threshold it is a life stage and circumstance threshold. Below are the situations that most commonly signal it is time to build or revisit a plan. If your circumstances match more than one, the need is not additive it is urgent.
You have children who depend on you and no guardian named in a legal document
Without a will that names a guardian, a court decides who raises your children. Without a trust or testamentary provision, assets may be delivered directly to them at 18 with no structure or protection. These are the most important documents any parent can have.
Your primary asset is a business interest that cannot simply be divided or liquidated
Without a succession plan, your death or incapacity can trigger a forced sale, a deadlock with co-owners, or an operational collapse. Your estate plan and your buy-sell agreement must work together and if they were drafted separately, they almost certainly don't.
You have children from a prior relationship and a current spouse
Default intestacy rules and simple wills often produce outcomes that conflict with your actual wishes in blended family situations leaving a surviving spouse with everything while children from a prior relationship receive nothing, or vice versa. Careful trust structuring is usually required.
You have recently married, divorced, had a child, or lost a family member
Each of these events can make an existing plan obsolete overnight. Marriage and divorce in Texas affect community property rights and beneficiary designations in ways that interact with estate documents in non-obvious ways. A plan that hasn't been reviewed since a major life change is likely no longer doing what you think it is.
Your net worth has grown to a level where estate tax planning becomes relevant
The federal exemption is currently elevated but scheduled to decrease. Estates in the $5–15 million range who have not reviewed their plan in the last two years may be sitting on significant transferable tax exposure. Every year of inaction with an elevated estate and a declining exemption is a planning opportunity lost.
You have been meaning to do this for years and haven't started
Dying without a will in Texas means the state decides who receives your property under the intestacy statutes which distribute assets according to a default formula that almost certainly doesn't reflect your wishes. The discomfort of thinking about mortality does not go away by delaying the plan; it just transfers to your family.
How We Build Your Plan
Estate planning at Montgomery Legal is a deliberate process not a document-signing exercise. We spend the time at the front end understanding your situation so that the plan we build actually fits it.
Initial Consultation
We review your assets, your family structure, your business interests, and your goals. This conversation drives everything the right documents, the right trust structure, the right tax strategy. We do not start drafting until we understand what your plan needs to accomplish.
Asset & Ownership Inventory
We map how your assets are held individually, jointly, in a trust, inside an entity, via beneficiary designation because how you own something determines how it transfers. Many estate plans fail not because the documents are wrong but because assets were never properly titled or the beneficiary designations were never updated.
Tax Analysis
For estates of meaningful size, we model the current and projected estate tax exposure, review the income tax basis position on appreciated assets, and identify the planning strategies that produce the best after-tax outcome including the implications of the current federal exemption levels.
Plan Design & Review
We present a proposed plan the documents, the trust structure, the tax strategy, and any business succession elements and walk through it with you before drafting begins. You understand what each component does and why it is in the plan.
Drafting & Execution
We draft all documents and coordinate execution including proper signing formalities, notarization, and witness requirements. Estate planning documents that are executed incorrectly can be challenged or invalidated; execution is handled carefully and completely.
Trust Funding & Beneficiary Alignment
A trust that is never funded never has assets transferred into it is an empty vessel. We coordinate the retitling of assets into the trust, update beneficiary designations on accounts and insurance policies, and ensure the full plan is operational, not just documented.
Ongoing Review
Estate plans are not set-and-forget documents. Tax law changes, family circumstances change, and the value and structure of your business changes. We recommend reviewing your plan every three to five years and immediately following any major life or business event.
