Houston Trusts Lawyer

Estate Planning Solutions Now and for the Future Throughout Texas

How important is your family's success to your spouse, your children and future generations? At Hendershot Cowart P.C., we offer a full range of estate planning services to help you protect your family's assets from the ravaging effects of estate taxes and probate decisions, while you are living and after your death.

Our full-service firm addresses a wide range of needs, including family law, business law, and estate planning. Combined, our skills and experience allow us to craft innovative and comprehensive solutions for all types of wills and trusts. Our long-term planning skills secure your assets tightly within the protection of the law, backed by our empathic understanding of your needs and over 100 years of combined experience.

In short, when your future is on the line, we are the firm Texas turns to. Call (713) 909-7323 or reach out to us online for an initial consultation with our Houston trusts attorneys.

"Why Do I Need a Will?"

Upon your death, your estate will go through a probate process. If you have an updated will in place, probate is a procedural matter and your assets will be assigned to beneficiaries according to your stated desires. The process is known as "testate" and protects your surviving spouse and children from the emotional and financial turmoil of a court proceeding over disputed assets.

Without an updated will, however, the courts consider your estate "intestate" and have the authority to make decisions regarding the final distribution of assets. While most judges make common-sense decisions to keep your assets in the immediate family, your estate will be open to dispute and litigation from anyone claiming the right to be a beneficiary. We eliminate that possibility.

Keep Your Will Up-to-Date

Writing a will and forgetting about it for many years isn't enough. Family circumstances change.

Consider how the following events would render your will open to dispute:

• The divorce of an adult child
• The death of a beneficiary
• Business ownership and succession planning
• A significant increase in assets

All of these are good reasons to ensure your will is updated regularly. An outdated will is open to probate litigation and can result in nearly as many problems for your surviving beneficiaries as having no will at all.

Trusts

Establishing a trust to distribute your assets while you are living, or upon your death, is one of the best ways to reduce taxes on your estate. More importantly, it ensures that your estate is disbursed exactly according to your wishes. Hendershot Cowart P.C. estate planning attorneys have more than 100 combined years of experience setting up living trusts, testamentary trusts, and insurance trusts to meet every kind of need.

This includes (but is not limited to) the following:

• Charitable trusts to ensure that your favorite religious institution or non-profit organization continues to receive your support, with significant tax savings for you.
• Living trusts to distribute your assets to family members under restricted conditions.
• Qualified personal residence trusts allow you to continue to live in your house while diverting the property value into a trust account, for tax purposes.

Families have been coming to Hendershot Cowart P.C. for their estate planning and probate needs since 1987. It is never too early or too late to start protecting your family's success. Start by getting answers to all of your questions about how a will and trust can help you protect your family's security, now and after you are gone. Our trusts lawyers advise and represent individuals and families in probate and estate planning matters throughout Texas.

Call (713) 909-7323 or contact us online to learn how we can help you.