Schedule a consultation with an experienced Montgomery estate planning lawyer today.
If you own property, have children, or hold accounts with named beneficiaries, you have an estate. The question is whether you’ve decided what happens to it, or whether Alabama’s default rules will decide for you. Wills, trusts, powers of attorney, healthcare directives, beneficiary designations, and guardianship provisions are necessary documents that make sure your wishes are honored.
Our Montgomery, AL estate planning lawyer builds and maintains these plans for individuals, families, and business owners throughout the Montgomery area. Bachus, Brom & Taylor, LLC has served Alabama clients for over two decades. Schedule a consultation to discuss your situation.
What does estate planning involve?
Estate planning is the process of deciding what happens to your property, your healthcare decisions, and your dependents if you become incapacitated or die. For some people that means a single will. For others it means a trust, multiple powers of attorney, beneficiary updates across a half-dozen accounts, and a plan for what happens to a family business. The scope depends entirely on what you own and who depends on you.
Without a will, Alabama intestacy laws make those decisions for you. A surviving spouse might assume they get everything. They might not. Children from a prior marriage, parents, and siblings can all have claims under the default rules. And even when a will exists, an outdated one can create as many problems as having none at all. A plan built around your actual life replaces those undesirable outcomes with choices you’ve made deliberately.
Every estate plan we put together starts with a conversation about what a client actually needs. Some people walk in wanting one document. Others have situations that require a layered approach. Below are the services we handle most often.
Steven Brom has practiced law in Alabama since 2001. Estate planning, probate, and trusts sit at the center of his practice alongside corporate governance and commercial litigation. He earned his undergraduate degree in History from the University of Georgia in 1998 and his Juris Doctor from the University of Colorado School of Law in 2001. He holds admissions to the Alabama State Bar, the Birmingham Bar Association, the Georgia State Bar, the U.S. District Courts for the Northern, Middle, and Southern Districts of Alabama, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
That breadth of admission matters when estates cross state lines or involve federal court proceedings. And after more than twenty years handling estate matters for Alabama families, the firm has seen the full range: simple wills for young couples, multi-trust structures for business owners, contested probate fights between siblings, last-minute plans drafted during a medical crisis. Our estate planning lawyer in Montgomery, AL brings that depth to every client’s situation.
Estate plans fail when they’re generic. A will drafted from a template might technically be valid, but it won’t address what happens to a family business with three partners, or how to provide for a child with special needs without disqualifying them from government benefits, or what to do when a client owns property in two states.
We serve Montgomery County and the surrounding area from our Birmingham office. Families come to us at every stage. New parents who need their first will. Retirees whose plans haven’t been touched in fifteen years. Business owners who need succession provisions before bringing on a partner. Clients going through divorce who need to restructure everything. And families dealing with inherited property disputes that better planning could have prevented.
Alabama estate plans draw from a set of core documents. Not every client needs all of them. The right combination depends on what you own, who relies on you, and what you want to control.
Choosing among these and combining them into a plan that actually works together is where the legal work happens. A will by itself doesn’t avoid probate. A trust that’s never funded accomplishes nothing. Powers of attorney drafted without understanding Alabama’s statutory requirements may not hold up when they’re needed most.
Your asset portfolio matters more than your net worth. Someone with a $400,000 estate spread across three bank accounts and a house has a simpler situation than someone with $400,000 in a small business, a rental property, and a retirement account with an ex-spouse still listed as beneficiary.
Family structure shapes everything else. Blended families need provisions that prevent accidental disinheritance. Parents of minor children need guardian designations. Families caring for a disabled adult child need to plan around government benefit eligibility. Someone going through a divorce needs to revisit every document, every beneficiary form, and every account title before the old plan creates outcomes nobody intended.
We also address planning for long-term medical costs, which is one of the most overlooked parts of estate planning. A hospitalization or extended care need can consume assets faster than most families expect. The right trust and titling decisions made today can protect a surviving spouse or dependent later. Many of the delays families face in probate trace back to gaps that could have been addressed during the planning stage.
Straightforward plans move fast. A single client who needs a will, a power of attorney, and a healthcare directive can often go from first meeting to signing documents in two to three weeks.
More involved plans take longer. A typical sequence looks like this:
Trust funding is the step people skip. A trust that exists on paper but doesn’t hold any assets provides no benefit. We follow up to make sure the plan is fully implemented, not just signed.
Plans also aren’t permanent. Major life changes, such as marriage, divorce, a new child, a death in the family, a move to another state, or a significant change in assets, should all trigger a review.
Come with whatever you have. We’ll sort through it together. The more you bring, the more specific the conversation:
If you don’t have a list ready, that’s fine. The first meeting is about understanding your situation and identifying what your plan should include. Most clients leave knowing what documents they need and what the process will look like going forward.
Alabama estate planning law sits at the intersection of state probate procedure, federal tax code, and healthcare regulations. These resources provide background before a consultation. They do not replace legal advice about your specific estate.
Your estate plan should work the way you intended it to. If you need to create one, update one, or fix one that wasn’t done right, Bachus, Brom & Taylor, LLC can help. Contact us to schedule a consultation. We serve families throughout Montgomery and the surrounding counties and respond to inquiries promptly.
