Estate planning, handled with care.

We meet with families on a range of estate questions and explain, in plain language, what we can help with directly. If your matter is outside our practice we will tell you, and refer you to a trusted attorney when we can.

The initial estate-planning consultation carries a modest flat fee. It is a working meeting. You leave with concrete legal advice about your situation and a recommended next step, whether or not you hire us for anything further. Calling to schedule costs nothing, and we'll be straight with you about scope and cost before any additional work begins.

Yes. Abraham Hanson speaks Spanish, and Spanish-speaking families work with him directly, with no interpreter in between.

McMinnville and Yamhill County, and across the Willamette Valley (Marion, Polk, Washington, and Clackamas counties, and into Linn County) in Oregon state court.

Probate is the court-supervised process for transferring a decedent's assets, governed by ORS chapter 113. It is generally required when the decedent owned assets in their sole name with no beneficiary designation. If the estate is small enough to qualify for a small-estate affidavit under ORS 114.515, the family can usually avoid full probate.

A small-estate affidavit under ORS 114.515 is a streamlined alternative to probate. Current thresholds at the time of writing allow it when the estate's personal property is valued at $275,000 or less and any real property is $200,000 or less. The affidavit can usually be filed 30 days after death, and the statute sets out who may file.

Oregon's intestate succession statute, ORS 112.045, decides who inherits when there is no will. The order generally runs to the surviving spouse and children, then parents, then siblings, and so on. Intestate succession often produces a result the decedent would not have chosen, which is one reason planning ahead matters.

Often, yes. Assets held in a properly funded revocable living trust under Oregon's Uniform Trust Code, ORS chapter 130, generally pass to beneficiaries without going through probate. Whether a trust is the right tool depends on the size and shape of the estate. That is one of the things we walk through in the first consultation.

We help families across the Willamette Valley. McMinnville and Yamhill County, Salem and Marion County, Dallas, Monmouth, and Independence in Polk County, the Washington and Clackamas county communities, and Albany in Linn County, with probate, small-estate affidavits, wills, and estate administration.