251-217-9733
Estate & Probate Planning
Where the family plan and the business plan have to be the same plan.
What This Work Covers
This is the business owner's version of estate planning. For most of our clients the largest asset in the estate is the company, and most estate plans treat it as a line item with a number next to it rather than as an operating business that someone has to run on Monday.
The work has two halves. One is the document set (wills, trusts, powers of attorney, healthcare directives, beneficiary designations). The other is making that document set agree with the operating agreement, the buy-sell, and whatever the company's governing documents already say about the same shares. Where the two disagree, the company documents usually control, and the estate plan fails quietly.
We also handle administration: opening and running an estate through Alabama probate, including estates that hold a business that has to keep operating while the estate is open. When a plan is contested rather than administered, that is litigation, and it is handled in the Probate, Trust & Fiduciary Litigation.
What We Handle
Wills and trusts
Revocable and irrevocable trusts, wills, and the schedule of assets that has to be accurate for either one to do what it says.
Powers of attorney and directives
Financial powers of attorney, healthcare directives, and settling in advance who is authorized to act when someone cannot act for themselves.
Business interests inside the estate
Making the operating agreement, the buy-sell agreement, and the estate plan say the same thing about the same shares.
Estate and gift tax planning
Structuring lifetime transfers and the estate toward the tax result you intended, with an LL.M. in taxation and a CPA qualification behind the numbers.
Probate administration
Opening and administering an estate in Alabama probate court, including estates holding an operating business that cannot pause while it happens.
Trust administration
Advising trustees on distributions, accountings, and the duties that arrive with the appointment whether or not anyone explained them.
Charitable giving
Charitable trusts, donor-advised funds, and private foundations, structured alongside the tax plan rather than bolted on afterward.
Family-office and adviser coordination
Getting the CPA, the financial adviser, the insurance broker, and the attorney working from one set of facts instead of four.
Sound familiar?
Where the Estate Plan and the Business Meet
The documents
Wills and trusts direct assets. Operating agreements and buy-sells direct shares. When the two conflict, the company documents generally win, and nobody finds out until it matters.
The valuation
An estate plan built on a number nobody has tested is a plan built on an assumption. Valuation drives the tax exposure and the fairness between the children who work in the business and the ones who do not.
The liquidity
Tax and buyouts are paid in cash. Deciding in advance where that cash comes from is planning. Discovering it is not there is a forced sale of the asset the plan was built to protect.
Who Does This Work
Robert J. Riccio
A CPA with an LL.M. in taxation from NYU. Estate planning, trusts, fiduciary matters, and the tax structuring underneath all of it.
Jordan W Gerheim
The company side: equity structure, agreements between owners, and keeping the corporate documents consistent with what the estate plan assumes.
William R. Lancaster
Certified mediator and arbitrator, for the family conversations that are better held with a neutral in the room than in front of a probate judge.
Questions Worth Answering Before You Sign Anything
Who inherits the shares?
And are they the same people who should be running the company?
Does the buy-sell price match the estate plan?
A buy-sell that values the interest one way and an estate plan that assumes another produces a tax bill or a family argument, and sometimes both.
Who signs tomorrow morning?
If you died tonight, who has authority to sign for the company at nine the next morning?
Is there liquidity to pay the tax?
Or does the plan quietly depend on selling the asset that generates the income?
Has anyone read them side by side?
Will, trust, operating agreement, buy-sell, and beneficiary designations, in one sitting, checking whether they actually agree.
Can your executor run a business?
Administering an estate and operating a company are different jobs, and the same person is not always right for both.
How This Work Is Billed
Want a number for your situation?
Related Services
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this different from ordinary estate planning?
It overlaps heavily, and for someone whose assets are a house and a retirement account there is little difference. The difference appears when a closely held business is in the estate. Then the plan has to account for control, valuation, liquidity, and the company's own governing documents, and a plan that ignores those is the one that produces a dispute.
Do I need a trust, or is a will enough?
It depends on what you own, where you own it, and what you are trying to accomplish. A will directs assets through probate. A trust can avoid probate for what it holds and can carry instructions that last beyond a single distribution. Owning a business, owning property in more than one state, or wanting control over timing all tend to move the answer toward a trust. It is a question to answer with your own facts in front of you rather than from a general rule.
What happens to my company if I die without a plan?
The interest passes under your will, or under Alabama's intestacy statute if there is no will, subject to whatever the operating agreement or buy-sell already says, and those documents can override the estate plan on the shares. Without either, a company can end up owned by people who have no role in it and no agreement about what to do next. That is where forced sales and owner disputes come from.
Do you handle probate itself, or only the planning?
Both. We prepare and structure the plan, and we administer estates through Alabama probate afterward, including where the estate holds an operating business.
What if the family ends up in a dispute?
Will contests, trust disputes, breach of fiduciary duty claims, and accounting disputes are handled by our litigation side. Two of our attorneys are certified mediators, and these cases are unusually well suited to mediation and unusually damaging when they are not resolved. See Probate, Trust & Fiduciary Litigation.
Related Insights
Put Both Plans in the Same Room
Book a Risk-Free Strategy Session and bring whatever documents you already have. An hour spent reading them against each other tends to be the most useful hour in this process.