Estate Planning Attorney in Gilbert, Arizona
Flat-fee trusts, wills, and asset protection for Gilbert families and business owners. Our office is twelve minutes from the Heritage District.
Gilbert went from farm town to one of Arizona's biggest suburbs in thirty years. Most of our clients here are dealing with what that growth left behind. The Power Ranch house is worth twice what they paid for it. The Intel paycheck includes RSUs that nobody at the brokerage tells you how to handle in a trust. The small business near the Heritage District has employees, a payroll, and a name worth something now.
The drafting itself is usually clean. Trust, pour-over will, powers of attorney, deed retitled. What slows things down is everything around the documents. People underestimate their equity. Stock comp from Intel or Honeywell needs trust language the brokerage won't write for you. And depending on the address, your kids could be in Higley, Gilbert Public, or Chandler Unified, which matters when we get to the guardianship clause.
Where our Gilbert work concentrates
Most of our Gilbert work is east of Val Vista and south of Williams Field. Seville, Power Ranch, Layton Lakes, Adora Trails, Cooley Station, Spectrum at Val Vista. The school question comes up in nearly every guardianship conversation. Higley Unified, Gilbert Public Schools, and Chandler Unified all overlap with Gilbert addresses, and parents picked the neighborhood partly because of which one. So when we name a guardian, we also write a clause that asks the guardian to weigh school continuity. Non-binding, but families honor it.
Downtown is a different conversation. The Heritage District clients are usually small business owners. Restaurants, multi-location operators, professional offices around Gilbert Town Center. The estate plan and the business plan have to coordinate, so we draft them at the same table.
The household we see most weeks
Two working parents. Both with retirement accounts. Both with employer life insurance. A home with somewhere between $200k and $500k in equity. Kids in elementary or middle school. Either no plan at all, or a will from when the first child was born and never updated.
The most urgent piece is almost never the trust. It's the guardianship clause. Who raises the kids if something happens to both of you, named with backups, and written so it survives the family conversation that follows.
Trust funding is the second piece. Most Gilbert homes are still titled in the homeowners' names or as joint tenants. Retitling into the trust isn't hard. It just has to actually get done. An unfunded trust is the most common reason Arizona estate plans fail when they're needed, so we move the primary residence into the trust as part of every core package. The most important asset shouldn't be the one that gets missed.
How we work with you
Most planning happens by video. Our office is twelve minutes from the Heritage District and fifteen from San Tan Village if you'd rather come in. Evening and weekend signings work for Gilbert clients who can't break away during the day.
What we do for Gilbert clients
Gilbert estate planning FAQ
Do I need a Gilbert-based estate planning attorney specifically, or is Mesa close enough?
Close enough. Arizona estate planning is governed by state law, and the same statutes apply identically across the East Valley. What matters is that the attorney drafts for Arizona property, Arizona probate, and Arizona community property rules. We are twelve minutes from the Heritage District and most of the work happens by video anyway.
We're zoned for Higley schools but live near the Chandler Unified line. Does that affect our guardianship clause?
It doesn't affect the legal validity, but it can affect the practical decision. We often add a non-binding letter of intent alongside the will that explains your school continuity preferences to whoever serves as guardian. Courts won't enforce it, but families generally honor written wishes.
I work at Intel's Ocotillo campus and have RSUs that vest over four years. Does that change my plan?
Yes. Vesting RSUs that hit your account after death need trust language that captures incoming property, and the beneficiary designation on the brokerage account where they land has to coordinate with the trust. It's a specific drafting pattern, not something you'd find in a template.
We just closed on a new build in Cooley Station. Should we wait to do the trust until we have more assets?
We hear this question a lot in newer Gilbert subdivisions. The home is almost always the largest asset by a wide margin. Once it's yours, retitling it into a trust now (versus dealing with probate on it later) is the right call. The cost of the plan doesn't scale with how complicated your situation is.
My business is set up as an LLC and I have a couple of rental properties. Should those go in the trust too?
Usually yes for the membership interests. Sometimes yes for the rentals, depending on liability exposure and lender consent. We walk through each in the consultation and tell you which need to move and which can stay where they are.
See more on the centralized FAQ page.
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Book a free 30-minute consultation. We'll tell you what you actually need, what you can skip, and quote a flat fee before you commit. Documents take three to five weeks.
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