Legal, tax, and retirement account decisions all affect each other, yet they usually get made one at a time, without that in view. We walk you through the full picture before your will or trust is drafted, so each decision is made with the others in sight.
Louisiana is the only state in the country that follows civil law, a legal tradition with its own rules for how property is owned, inherited, and passed between spouses and children.
The question worth asking isn't whether Louisiana is on an online template's map of covered states. It's whether community property, usufruct, and forced heirship are in the documents.
None of this is a problem, as long as your plan was built for Louisiana. That's where we start.
In medicine, the hardest cases go before a tumor board: specialists from every discipline study one patient's complete chart before anyone treats. The outcomes can be better because nothing is decided in isolation. Estate planning almost never gets that. The attorney drafts from an intake form while your accounts, your beneficiary forms, and your tax picture sit in other offices, unseen. Our process builds the complete chart first. Starting with us doesn't mean skipping the attorney. It means the attorney drafts with your whole picture already on the table.
Every will, trust, and power of attorney in your plan is drafted by Eric Kallio of Kallio Law Firm, LLC, an independent Louisiana law firm, under your own engagement with the firm. Your attorney has a name, a bar number, and a phone that answers. And the attorney starts with the full picture, not a blank intake form.
The drafting happens with visibility into your investments, beneficiary designations, and tax picture, so the documents and the money pull in the same direction.
Choose an attorney from the local listings, or try one of the online services. Fill out an intake form. Pay the fee. Maybe sit through a meeting where the attorney speaks a language you didn't go to school to learn. Then the documents come back, and you hope:
…hope you understood them.
…hope they captured what you meant.
…hope it all works out the way you wanted.
Hope is doing a lot of work in that plan.
Someone walks through it with you, at your pace. Slow it down, ask again, take a week to think. The fee is flat and known before you start, so nothing is getting away from you. And before any legal document is drafted, you and your planning advisor, working alongside the attorney's office, build your Outcome Summary: what you want to happen, and what you don't, in words you can read. You know what your plan is supposed to do before it becomes legal language. Then the attorney drafts to accomplish it.
The result: an estate plan built with your investments and your taxes in view, each part working with the others instead of potentially working against them. Along the way, most people see their financial situation clearly for the first time, and often find opportunities they didn't know were there.
It doesn't. Your planning advisor handles three of the four stages under one flat fee, quoted before anything begins and unchanged no matter how many questions you ask or how much time you take. No expensive meter running while you think and explore. And unlike the online services, you're working with a real person: a competent educator who works hand in hand with the attorney's office. You'll know your outcomes, clearly and in writing, before any of it becomes legalese and before the attorney drafts a single document.
See where the time goes →Wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and the structures that carry your wishes forward, built for Louisiana law.
Looking for opportunities to lower taxes during your lifetime and reduce what your heirs may lose to taxes later. Some exist only if you act before decisions are locked in.
Reviewing how ownership, titling, and structure protect what you've built.
Enjoying what you've built while you're here, with a clear picture of what your heirs may actually receive, and what could change that.
If you own a business or an interest in one, its future is part of your estate plan, whether you intend to pass it on, sell it, or exit one day. Most owners have no written plan for any of those. Deciding who steps in, what it's worth, and how it transfers belongs in your plan, not in a courtroom.
Most people haven't gotten around to estate planning. Others have documents from years ago, sitting in a drawer, written for a different life. Wherever you're starting from, that's exactly where this conversation begins. Start with a complimentary discovery consultation.