What We Do

Estate & Wealth Preservation

Estate and Wealth Preservation Attorneys

Planning for your family’s security

At the Gallagher Law Firm in Lansing, Michigan, our estate planning lawyers will help you design a plan to protect your assets and preserve your wealth and your family’s heritage. Even families with modest incomes may accumulate an estate that requires special trusts or wealth transfer strategies to fully protect it from unnecessary losses to taxes, medical expenses, and probate costs.

If you would like to discuss ways to preserve your wealth for your retirement and for your family, contact our Lansing estate planning office and make arrangements to meet with a lawyer.

Every adult needs a basic estate plan

Every adult should have basic estate planning tools, including a will, a medical power-of-attorney or living will, and a durable power-of-attorney in place. If you become incapacitated without having signed those documents, the court will appoint a conservator or guardian to make decisions about your welfare, including questions of life support.

Complex plans to protect extensive wealth and provide for special needs

Through wealth preservation planning, possibly with the involvement of your accountant, we will help you minimize or avoid probate and estate taxes. A plan may make use of off-shore accounts, revocable trusts, gifts, tax planning, and business succession planning as asset protection strategies. The use of living trusts also can be useful in special needs planning.

Our service goes an extra step

When we prepare a will, trust, durable power-of-attorney, or medical power-of-attorney, we don’t just send it home with you to be dropped in the fire chest. Our estate planning documents include a set of clear step-by-step instructions on what your family needs to do if you die or become incapacitated.

Probate and trust administration, contests, guardianships, conservatorships, mediation

We will help you with the probate process and the transfer of deeds, trust administration, litigation of a contested trust or will, and guardianship or conservatorship proceedings to appoint patient advocates / health care surrogates or agents for minors and the disabled. Often, we recommend mediation of disputes as the way to best resolve probate issues.

For more information see our estate planning and wealth preservation information center.