Estate planning & asset protection.
You have spent years building something worth protecting. We build a plan that truly reflects your family, your values, and your goals.
A plan built around you.
A well-designed estate plan puts the right people in control, keeps your assets out of probate, and makes sure nothing is left to chance. We take the time to understand your story, your values, and your goals, then build a plan that truly reflects them, never a standard template.
Every engagement begins with a real conversation and a single, flat-fee quote before any work begins.
- Wills and comprehensive estate plans
- Revocable living trusts to avoid probate
- Powers of attorney and advance directives
- Guardianship planning for minor and adult children
- Trust administration and funding coordination
- Beneficiary designation review
- Business succession & founder equity planning
- Digital assets integrated into your estate plan
The estate planning spectrum.
Estate planning is not one document. It is a spectrum, and most families move along it as their lives, assets, and goals evolve. These four instruments are the stops most clients consider.
Will-Based Plan
Directs who inherits, names guardians for your children, and pairs with lifetime documents (powers of attorney and health directives) for incapacity. Lowest cost, but it doesn't avoid probate on its own.
Revocable Living Trust
Adds probate avoidance, privacy, and seamless management if you're incapacitated. For married couples it can mature at the first death into protective subtrusts. Only works for assets you actually retitle into it.
Irrevocable Non-Grantor Trust
Moves assets (and their future growth) out of your taxable estate, adds strong creditor protection, and becomes its own taxpayer. The primary vehicle for QSBS §1202 exclusion stacking. You genuinely give up control.
SLANT
A spousal lifetime access non-grantor trust: the same estate-tax, creditor-protection, and QSBS benefits, engineered so your spouse can still benefit from the assets through a careful adverse-party consent mechanism.
| Question | Will Plan | Revocable Trust | Non-Grantor Trust | SLANT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avoids probate | No | Yes, if funded | Yes | Yes |
| You keep full control | Yes | Yes | No | Spouse can benefit |
| Estate-tax savings | Limited | At first death | Yes | Yes |
| Protects you from creditors | No | Not during life | Yes, prospectively | Yes, prospectively |
| QSBS / founder planning | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Complexity & upkeep | Lowest | Moderate | Highest | Highest |
A simplified, client-friendly comparison. “Yes” and “No” hide enormous nuance: whether any benefit actually materializes depends on drafting, funding, timing, and your specific facts. Advanced trusts sit on top of a foundation plan, never in place of one.
Vickery Law also accepts a limited number of election law and democratic-governance matters through referral, drawing on Chad Vickery's work as Board Chair and General Counsel of The Concord Project. If you have been referred for this work, we welcome the conversation.
Start with your facts, not a form
The right plan begins with understanding your family, your assets, and your goals. Our free Check-Up is the easiest place to start.