Most wealth doesn’t survive the second generation. Yours can.
Not because of bad investments — because nobody prepared the family. Estate planning is the documents. Legacy planning is the preparation. Our Legacy Planning Department does both: beneficiaries and titling done right, taxes sequenced, and your children and grandchildren brought into the plan before they need it.
The checkup is a real conversation with a Houston advisor — not a screening call, not a sales script. You’ll hear which part of your plan needs attention first, and if we’re not the right firm for you, we’ll tell you that on the call.
Families don’t fail because of markets. They fail because nobody talked.
Estate planning in Houston usually starts the same way: the will exists, the accounts exist. And yet the transfer goes wrong — a beneficiary form from two marriages ago overrides the will, an account is titled so it bypasses the estate entirely, or the children inherit an IRA with a 10-year clock nobody explained.
Estate planning is the documents. Legacy planning is the preparation — aligning the family, sequencing the taxes, and making sure the people who inherit the plan actually understand it. We do both, working alongside your attorney and CPA rather than replacing them.
It’s the fourth quadrant of the Family Wealth Circle™: care for those you love.
Most financial plans stop at retirement. Ours are designed to last for generations.
Our Legacy Planning Department exists for one reason: wealth transfer is not just financial — it’s emotional. Most firms plan for the current client and lose the family at the transfer. We build relationships with your children and grandchildren before the transfer happens, so when the time comes, they’re not left figuring things out alone.
Discover. Design. Direct.
The same three-stage process behind every Family Wealth Circle™ engagement — because your legacy plan shouldn’t live in a separate drawer from your retirement plan.
The Impact! Generations Circle
Completing a legacy plan is something most families never do — so we treat it as the milestone it is.
Families who finish their plan are welcomed into the Impact! Generations Circle: a private group of families who made the intentional decision to not just build wealth, but to protect it, prepare it, and pass it on with purpose.
It’s more than recognition. It’s the ongoing side of the relationship — the events, the education, and the support that keep your family prepared as the years pass.
The Family Wealth CircleTM
One family. Four strategies. One coordinated plan.
Estate is the fourth quadrant — and it only works when it’s coordinated with the other three. Beneficiaries interact with taxes, survivor income interacts with Social Security timing, and the inherited-IRA rules interact with everything. That’s why we plan the circle, not the quadrant.
Explore the Family Wealth Circle™ framework →Common questions about estate & legacy planning
If yours isn’t here, ask it on the 15-minute call — we’d rather answer it early than late.
Estate planning is the documents — wills, trusts, beneficiary designations, powers of attorney. Legacy planning is the preparation: aligning the family, educating the next generation, and coordinating taxes and income so the transfer actually works. We do both, alongside your attorney.
No — document drafting is an attorney’s work. We coordinate with your estate attorney and CPA, or refer you to one, and make sure the documents, the beneficiary designations, and the financial plan all say the same thing. That alignment is where most estates quietly break.
Not because of markets. Because of lack of planning, communication, and preparation. Heirs who were never included in the plan inherit accounts they don’t understand and deadlines they didn’t know existed. Preparing the family is as much the work as preparing the documents.
Yes — that’s the point of the Legacy Planning Department. Family legacy meetings introduce your heirs to the plan, and next-generation education covers managing inherited wealth, investing basics, and financial responsibility, tailored by age.
Three, over and over: beneficiary designations that contradict the will (the form wins, not the will), accounts titled so they bypass the estate plan entirely, and inherited-IRA strategies that ignore the 10-year distribution rule. All three are cheap to fix now and expensive to discover later.
That’s ultimately an attorney’s call — but the answer depends on things we map with you first: what you own, how it’s titled, who inherits, whether probate privacy matters to your family, and how Texas community property rules apply. We’ll walk that with you, then coordinate with your attorney so whichever document you need actually matches the accounts.
Almost always. Documents drafted years ago drift out of sync with account titling, remarriages, new grandchildren, and tax law. A review confirms the plan still does what you think it does — and that your family knows it exists.
What you’ve built deserves a future.
Fifteen minutes with a fiduciary advisor — including an honest look at whether your estate plan and your financial plan are telling the same story.