Estate Planning in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Revocable Living Trust

This is the foundation of a comprehensive plan. A revocable living trust lets you keep full control of your assets while you're alive and able, while laying out exactly how they'll be managed if you become incapacitated or pass away. You act as your own trustee, and the successor you choose can step in without going to court, a private, seamless transition at the moment your family needs it most.

The worry we hear most often in consultations is "does this mean I lose control of my own money?" No. While you're alive and well, nothing about your day-to-day changes, you still buy, sell, refinance, and spend exactly as you do now. "Revocable" means you can change or cancel it at any time. What the trust adds is a plan for the two moments a will can't reach: the period when you're alive but can't manage things yourself, and the handoff after you're gone. It's especially valuable if you own real estate, run a business, or have minor children. But a trust only delivers on any of that if it's actually funded, which is why we don't stop at drafting.

For example: Say a Bixby homeowner has a serious stroke and can't manage money for several months, but recovers. Because their assets were held in a funded revocable trust, the successor trustee they chose could keep the mortgage and bills paid the whole time, with no court guardianship and no frozen accounts. A will alone would have done nothing here, because a will only speaks after death.

Pour-Over Will

Think of this as the safety net beneath your trust. A pour-over will catches any asset that never made it into your trust and "pours" it in after your death, so everything still flows through your overall plan instead of falling to Oklahoma's intestacy rules. It's also where you nominate guardians for minor children.

Here's the part we're honest with clients about: a pour-over will is a backstop, and we plan so it stays a backstop. Assets that pass through the pour-over will can still run through Oklahoma probate before they reach the trust, so if that document is doing heavy lifting after you're gone, it usually means the trust was never fully funded in the first place. Our aim is a plan where the pour-over will catches almost nothing, because we funded the trust correctly while you were alive.

For example: Imagine someone opens a new brokerage account a year after signing their trust and never gets around to retitling it. When they pass, that one stray account is what the pour-over will is for, it directs the account into the trust so it's still distributed the way they wanted, rather than under Oklahoma's default rules. Useful as a safety net; better still if that account had been titled in the trust from the start.

Financial Power of Attorney

Names a trusted person to manage your financial life, paying bills, handling bank accounts, managing investments, filing taxes, if you can't. Without one, your family may have to ask an Oklahoma court to appoint a guardian of the estate before anyone can touch your accounts, at the worst possible time.

Because Allie's background is in accounting, we pay attention to the parts of a financial power of attorney that often get glossed over: whether it's durable (stays in effect if you're incapacitated), whether your agent has clear authority to handle tax matters and work with your CPA, and how it interacts with the accounts you've already set up to pass outside the document. We'd rather your agent's authority be obvious to a bank than argued over. More on our powers of attorney page.

For example: Picture an adult daughter trying to keep her father's finances afloat after he develops dementia. With a durable financial power of attorney already in place, she can pay his bills, manage his accounts, and file his taxes right away. Without one, she'd likely have to open a court guardianship of the estate first, months of delay and expense before she can touch a single account.

Healthcare Power of Attorney

Lets you appoint someone to make medical decisions on your behalf if you're incapacitated. The practical detail we make sure gets handled: your agent also needs authority to access your medical information under HIPAA, otherwise the person you trusted to decide can be told a provider "can't discuss that with you." We build that access in, and we talk through the harder-to-say-out-loud questions, who you'd actually want in the room, and who you wouldn't, so the choice is yours and not a default.

For example: Say an unmarried Tulsa man is in the ICU after an accident and can't speak for himself. His named healthcare agent can talk directly with the care team, review his records, and authorize treatment. Without that document, the hospital may have to look to a statutory priority list of relatives, which might land the decision with someone he wouldn't have chosen.

Advance Directive (Living Will)

Puts your end-of-life wishes in writing, including whether you'd want life-sustaining treatment if you were terminally ill or permanently unconscious. It's one of the kindest things you can do for your family: it spares them from guessing during an impossible moment.

Oklahoma has its own advance directive format rather than a generic national one, which is a big reason we don't hand you a downloaded template. We make sure your directive fits how Oklahoma providers and hospitals actually read these documents, and that it lines up with your healthcare power of attorney instead of contradicting it, a conflict between the two is exactly what creates confusion at the bedside. See our advance directives page for more.

For example: Consider a family gathered around a loved one with a terminal diagnosis, unsure whether to continue life support, and quietly divided about it. A clear advance directive answers the question for them: it states what that person wanted, so the decision isn't a debate among grieving relatives. That clarity is often the real gift of this document.

Nomination of Guardian

Lets you name who should raise your minor children if you no longer can. Without it, an Oklahoma court decides, and it may not choose who you would. A court still formally confirms a guardian, but the judge gives real weight to a parent's written nomination, which is why getting it on paper matters.

The mistake we catch: parents name a guardian for the children but never plan for the money, leaving whoever raises their kids to petition a court for every expense. We coordinate the guardian nomination with your trust so the person raising your children and the person managing the funds for them are working from the same plan, not against each other. If you'd want those to be two different people, we can build that in on purpose.

For example: Say a Broken Arrow couple wants Grandma to raise their two young kids, but Grandma isn't the person they'd trust to manage an inheritance. We can name her as guardian while a financially savvy sibling serves as trustee of the funds set aside for the children, two roles, two people, one coordinated plan, so no one has to go back to court to pay for school clothes.

Warranty Deed

The document that actually moves your real estate into your trust. This is a critical funding step, without it, your home can still end up in court even though you took the time to create a trust. It's the single most common gap we see in plans people bring us from elsewhere: a signed trust, and a house still titled in the individual's name.

Deed and title work is an area we take seriously, Allie is a member of the Tulsa Title and Probate Association, so we prepare the deed and get it recorded with the correct county clerk, rather than assuming a form did the job. Small detail on paper; the difference between avoiding probate and not.

For example: Imagine a couple who paid for a trust online, signed it, and filed it in a drawer, but never recorded a deed moving their South Tulsa home into it. When one of them dies, the house is still titled in their individual name, so it goes through probate anyway. The trust they bought specifically to avoid court didn't do the one thing they wanted, because the funding step was skipped.

Assignment of Business Interest

Transfers your business interest into your trust so it becomes part of your plan and is managed and distributed on your terms. For business owners, it's how you protect continuity and avoid disruption to the company you've built.

Where our accounting background earns its keep: a business interest can't just be "assigned" in a vacuum. We check it against your operating agreement or bylaws, many contain transfer restrictions or buy-sell terms that override a casual assignment, and think through how your ownership actually moves so the company keeps running without a court freezing things while your family sorts it out. If you have a partner or a CPA already advising you, we'd rather coordinate with them than around them.

For example: Say someone owns half of a small Tulsa LLC and wants their stake to pass into their trust. Their operating agreement, it turns out, restricts transfers and gives the other member a first right to buy. Catching that before signing an assignment means the transfer is structured to respect the agreement, so the plan works and the business partnership doesn't get blindsided.