Preston Hollow doesn’t announce itself. The estates along Walnut Hill and Forest Lane sit back behind old-growth trees, the kind that take fifty years to grow and can’t be replaced with money. That’s a fitting metaphor for what estate planning actually looks like here: what these families have built took decades, sometimes generations, and it deserves a plan built with the same patience.
Preston Hollow has long been home to Dallas’s civic and business leadership, families whose names are attached to companies, foundations, and institutions across the city. That kind of prominence brings a particular estate planning complexity: significant wealth spread across business interests, real estate, and philanthropic commitments, along with a next generation that needs to be prepared, not just provided for.
At Coleman Jackson, P.C., this is exactly the kind of complexity we’re built to handle, with the same care we bring to every family, regardless of what’s at stake.
What Brings Preston Hollow Families to Our Door
Preston Hollow families frequently hold wealth across multiple, interconnected categories: closely held businesses, commercial and residential real estate, investment portfolios, and philanthropic commitments that have become part of the family’s identity in Dallas. Layer in multiple generations, sometimes a family foundation, and heirs with very different levels of involvement in the family’s affairs, and the estate planning picture becomes genuinely complex.
We also see something specific to this neighborhood: families who care deeply about legacy in the fullest sense, not just what’s transferred, but what’s preserved. The business their grandparents built. The foundation that carries the family name. The values they want the next generation to actually understand, not just inherit passively.
What we find, consistently, is that families with this level of complexity are also the ones who most need a plan that’s been thought through carefully, not assembled from a template.
Estate Planning Services We Provide for Preston Hollow Residents
Wills, Trusts, and Estate Administration
For families with substantial, multi-category wealth, a will is only the starting point. A properly structured trust framework, often several trusts working together, is what actually protects a family’s holdings, minimizes tax exposure, and ensures a smooth transition across generations.
Our attorneys draft and administer:
- Revocable Living Trusts maintain control now, avoid probate later
- Irrevocable Trusts asset protection, estate tax reduction, and Medicaid planning
- Testamentary Trust trusts created through your will for minor or disabled beneficiaries
- Special Needs Trusts preserve government benefit eligibility for disabled family members while still providing meaningful financial support
- Wills and Pour-Over Wills the legal backbone of your estate plan
- Trust and Estate Administration representing beneficiaries and holding trustees accountable
For a deeper look at how Texas law governs these instruments, including the Texas Trust Code, the Texas Probate Code, and the Texas Property Code, visit our Trusts, Estates, and Will Administration page.
Guardianship for Children and Aging Parents
Even in families with significant resources, guardianship planning is often overlooked, sometimes because it feels like the least important document compared to the trusts and business structures getting most of the attention.
Texas law doesn’t make exceptions for wealth. Without proper documentation, a court decides who raises minor children and who manages the affairs of an aging parent who can no longer do so themselves. At Coleman Jackson, P.C., we help Preston Hollow families designate guardians, establish powers of attorney and healthcare directives, and manage the formal guardianships process for both the person and the estate when necessary.
Educational Planning for Children and Grandchildren
Preston Hollow families often think about educational planning across an entire generation of grandchildren at once, not just one child, which changes the planning calculus considerably.
Texas Property Code § 42.0021 protects 529 plan funds from creditor claims regardless of vesting. For families funding multiple grandchildren, or navigating a grandchild with a disability, educational trusts under the Texas Trust Code often provide the flexibility and control that individual 529 accounts can’t match on their own.
We help families structure 529 plans, Coverdell accounts, and educational trusts as part of a coordinated plan, including the five-year gift tax election that allows a lump-sum 529 contribution to be treated as spread over five years, a strategy our tax attorneys frequently use for grandparents funding several grandchildren simultaneously.
Tax Planning Within Your Estate Plan
This is the area where Coleman Jackson, P.C. is built differently from most estate planning practices, and it matters most for families with the level of complexity common in Preston Hollow.
Every trust, business transfer, and philanthropic structure we build is evaluated for its tax consequences from the outset. For families here, that typically involves federal gift and estate tax thresholds, generation-skipping transfer tax planning across multiple generations of heirs, capital gains and step-up in basis strategies for long-held real estate and business interests, and charitable giving structures, including private foundations and donor-advised funds, for families who want philanthropy formally built into their legacy. The estate tax exemption is not permanent, Congress has revisited it repeatedly, and families with substantial estates need plans built to hold up under changing law.
The Part That Doesn’t Show Up in a Brochure
The technical work here, trust structuring, tax law, business succession, is substantial, and we bring genuine depth to it.
But the more consequential conversations are usually quieter than that. They’re about which child is prepared to run the family business, and whether the others will see that decision as fair. About a family foundation that needs new leadership as the founding generation ages, and no clear plan for who takes it on. About heirs who’ve never been told what they’re actually going to inherit, and the anxiety that creates long before anyone passes away.
These conversations require trust, built over years, not a single meeting. That’s the relationship we aim to build with every Preston Hollow family we work with.
Many of our longest-standing client relationships are with Preston Hollow families, people who call us for a new grandchild, a business restructuring, or a foundation transition, because the plan has to evolve as the family does.
Tax Law. Business Law. Estate Law. Together.
Coleman Jackson, P.C. was built around three practice areas because families with substantial, multi-generational wealth don’t have problems that fit inside a single legal discipline.
If you hold a closely held business, your estate plan has to account for its valuation, its transfer, and the tax consequences of that transfer. If your holdings include significant real estate, your plan has to weigh the capital gains implications of selling versus passing it down. If philanthropy is part of your legacy, your plan needs a structure, foundation, donor-advised fund, or charitable trust, that reflects that intention clearly.
That is the integrated counsel we’ve built our entire practice around.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ready to Start the Conversation?
If your estate plan hasn’t kept pace with what you’ve built, business interests, real estate, a philanthropic legacy, the right time to address that is now. We care about helping Preston Hollow families protect not just their wealth, but the legacy behind it. Contact the attorneys at Coleman Jackson, P.C. today at 214-599-0431.
