Experienced Estate Planning

---

Our estate planning practice, led by a seasoned attorney with decades of experience, provides comprehensive guidance in drafting and implementing essential estate planning documents, including wills, trusts, healthcare and financial powers of attorney, and living wills. We tailor each instrument to reflect your specific wishes, minimize tax implications, and ensure seamless asset transfer to future generations.

We craft customized wills tailored to Louisiana's unique civil law traditions, ensuring your assets are distributed according to your wishes while protecting your loved ones. Our wills can incorporate usufructs granting a surviving spouse or other beneficiary the right to use and enjoy property (such as the family home or investments) for life or a specified period, while preserving naked ownership for eventual heirs. We also frequently include testamentary trusts to manage assets for minors, special needs beneficiaries, or those requiring spendthrift protection, providing structured distributions over time. Additional provisions may address contingencies such as safeguards for blended families, along with guardian nominations for minor children and other personalized directives. Our goal is to create clear, enforceable documents that minimize disputes, respect forced heirship rules, and offer peace of mind through thoughtful, Louisiana-specific estate planning.

We design customized trusts to meet your specific estate planning objectives while fully complying with Louisiana's civil law requirements, including forced heirship protections. Inter vivos trusts can be revocable, allowing you to retain control, amend terms, add/remove assets, or revoke the trust entirely during your lifetime, often to ensure seamless asset management during incapacity, and provide privacy. We also prepare irrevocable inter vivos trusts when asset protection from creditors, potential Medicaid planning, or tax advantages are priorities, as these permanently remove assets from your estate. We tailor each trust to align with your goals, minimize disputes, and deliver lasting security for your heirs.

We prepare comprehensive durable powers of attorney to ensure your financial and healthcare decisions remain in trusted hands if you become incapacitated. Our financial power of attorney empowers a carefully selected agent to manage your assets, pay bills, handle banking and investments, sell or manage property, file taxes, and address other financial matters and remains effective even during periods of incapacity, with tailored authority to protect your interests and minimize risks. Our healthcare power of attorney appoints a trusted individual to make critical medical decisions on your behalf, including treatment options, hospitalization and surgery, in alignment with your values and wishes under Louisiana's Health Care Decisions Act. We customize these durable documents to meet Louisiana's specific requirements, providing peace of mind through clear, enforceable protections that work alongside your will, living will declaration, or other estate planning tools.

We assist clients in preparing living wills using Louisiana's statutory form to clearly express your wishes regarding end-of-life medical care. This document directs physicians to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining procedures if you are diagnosed with a terminal and irreversible condition.  We ensure your living will complies with Louisiana requirements. By customizing this essential advance directive alongside your other estate planning documents, we help provide clarity, reduce family burden during difficult times, and honor your values under Louisiana law.

We craft customized pre- and post-matrimonial agreements tailored to Louisiana's community property regime. These agreements allow couples to establish or modify their matrimonial regime, such as adopting a full separation of property regime where all assets and debts remain separate, or a modified regime that preserves community property for certain items while designating others as separate property. We frequently include provisions for the reservation of fruits, ensuring that income, dividends, interest, rents, or appreciation from separate property remain separate rather than becoming community property. Our goal is to create clear, enforceable documents that comply with Louisiana Civil Code requirements, prevent future disputes over commingling or classification of assets, respect the default community property rules when unmodified, and provide peace of mind through thoughtful, Louisiana-specific marital planning.