University Park families know something that most people take a lifetime to learn: what you build matters less than what you protect.
The homes on Lovers Lane and Turtle Creek Boulevard don’t stay in families by accident. The businesses that carry a family’s name from one generation to the next don’t transfer themselves. The children and grandparents who depend on you don’t get protected by good intentions. They get protected by a plan, a real one, built around your specific family, your specific assets, and the specific people you love.
That’s the conversation we start at Coleman Jackson, P.C., and for many of our University Park clients, it’s a conversation that begins with a single question they’ve been putting off for years.
What Brings University Park Families to Our Door
University Park is the wealthiest ZIP code in North Texas by median household income, and that distinction comes with a particular kind of legal complexity that most estate planning practices aren’t equipped to handle on their own.
Families here often hold assets across multiple categories at once: a business with partners and payroll and contracts, a home that has appreciated dramatically over decades, investment accounts, retirement funds, and sometimes inherited property with its own tangled history. Add in minor children, an aging parent who needs care, or a family member with special needs, and the picture gets complicated fast. What is worth building is worth protecting.
What we see, again and again, is that families who have done everything right in terms of building wealth are the same families who haven’t yet gotten around to protecting it. Not because they don’t care. Because they’re busy. Because it feels distant. Because no one has sat down with them and walked them through what actually happens without a plan.
We do that. We take the time.
Estate Planning Services We Provide in University Park
Wills, Trusts, and Estate Administration
A will is the foundation, but for most University Park families, it’s not enough on its own. A properly structured revocable living trust lets you avoid the cost and delay of probate, maintain full control of your assets during your lifetime, and ensure that your property passes exactly as you intend, without a court deciding how.
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
This is the part of estate planning that feels the most uncomfortable to talk about, which is exactly why it’s the most important.
If you have minor children and something happens to you, who raises them? If a parent’s health declines and they can no longer manage their own finances or medical decisions, who steps in? Texas guardianship law governs both of these situations, and the answers aren’t automatic. Without legal documentation in place, a court will make those decisions for you.
At Coleman Jackson, P.C., we help University Park families designate guardians for minor children, establish powers of attorney and healthcare directives for aging parents, and navigate the formal guardianship process when court intervention becomes necessary. We handle guardianships for both the person and the estate, meaning we protect not just who makes decisions, but how assets are managed on behalf of someone who can no longer do so themselves.
Educational Planning for Children and Grandchildren
For families focused on the next generation, educational planning belongs inside your estate plan, not as an afterthought, but as a deliberate piece of the overall structure.
Texas offers strong asset protection for 529 Education Savings Plans under TX Property Code § 42.0021, shielding those funds from creditor attachment whether the account is vested or not. For families with more complex needs, a child with a disability, a grandparent wanting to fund multiple grandchildren, or a situation where simple 529 accounts aren’t flexible enough, educational trusts under the Texas Trust Code provide a higher degree of control and legal protection.
We help families evaluate which tools make sense: 529 plans, Coverdell Education Savings Accounts, educational trusts, and, for families with disabled children, the coordination between special needs trusts and educational funding that ensures government benefit eligibility is preserved. The gift tax implications of 529 super funding, the five-year election that allows a lump-sum contribution while treating it as spread over five years, is one of the planning opportunities our tax attorneys make sure clients understand before a dollar is moved.
Tax Planning Within Your Estate Plan
This is where Coleman Jackson, P.C. is different from most estate planning practices.
Estate planning and tax law are not separate disciplines for our clients; they’re the same conversation. Every trust we draft, every asset transfer we structure, every business succession plan we build is evaluated through a tax lens. Not as an add-on. As part of the work.
For University Park families, that means attention to federal gift and estate tax thresholds, generation-skipping transfer tax planning for grandchildren, capital gains and step-up in basis strategies for long-held real property, and charitable giving structures for clients who want to include philanthropy in their legacy. The estate tax exemption is not permanent law, Congress has revisited it multiple times in recent decades, and families with larger estates need plans that are built to adapt.
The Part That Doesn’t Show Up in a Brochure
Estate planning is technical work. It requires a real understanding of Texas trust law, federal tax law, guardianship statutes, and property codes. We take that seriously.
But here’s what we’ve learned over 35 years of practice: the technical part is only half of it.
The other half is the conversations that happen before any document is drafted. The conversations about which child should serve as trustee, and whether that’s fair to the others. About a grandparent with early memory loss who hasn’t signed a power of attorney yet. About a business partner who doesn’t know there’s a succession plan coming. About what it actually means to raise someone else’s children if the worst happens.
These are not legal questions. They are human ones. And answering them honestly, with someone who knows your family and takes your goals seriously, is what good estate planning actually looks like.
Our University Park clients have been with us for years, some for more than a decade. They call when something changes. They send their neighbors and colleagues our way. They come back when a new grandchild arrives, when a business restructures, when a parent’s health declines. That continuity isn’t accidental. It’s what we’re building from the very first consultation.
Tax Law. Business Law. Estate Law. Together.
Coleman Jackson, P.C. was built around three practice areas for a reason. Most families don’t have purely estate planning problems or purely tax problems or purely business problems. They have life, complex, interconnected, and requiring counsel that can see the full picture.
If you own a business, your estate plan has to account for how that business is valued, how it transfers, and what tax consequences come with that transfer. If you hold real property, your estate plan has to consider the capital gains implications of selling versus inheriting. If you have an aging parent who may need Medicaid in the future, your estate plan has to be structured with that timeline in mind, now, while there’s still time to act.
That’s the practice we’ve built. Tax law, business law, and estate law, not as three separate departments, but as one integrated body of counsel for families who deserve all three working together.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ready to Start the Conversation?
If you’ve been putting off your estate plan, or if you have one that hasn’t been looked at in years, the right time to act is now. Not because something bad is about to happen. Because protecting the people you love is too important to leave for later. We at Coleman Jackson, P.C. care about helping families in University Park and everywhere to build strong legacies and we enjoy talking to our families about how to protect what they have carefully built to the fullest extent of the law. Ready to start protecting your legacy? Contact the attorneys at Coleman Jackson, P.C. today at 214-599-0431.
