Baird, Crews, Schiller & Whitaker P.C.

Practice Areas

Estate Planning / Wealth Transfer / Asset Preservation

• Powers of Attorney, Medical Powers of Attorney, and Directives to Physician: Basic documents to manage a person's assets, business affairs, health, and well being during lifetime.
• Wills: Document to manage and transfer a person's assets at death.
• Estate Planning: Comprehensive, coordinated planning of one's assets, taking into consideration gift taxes, estate taxes, generation-skipping taxes, business income taxes, and personal income taxes, and the overall desires of a person in the ultimate disposition of their assets, either during lifetime or at death, as well as creditor protection and asset preservation in the overall desires.
• Multi-Generation Planning: Coordinated estate planning of two or more generations, paying particular attention to reducing overall taxes to all family members and to insure that the proper family member is responsible for the management of the family assets or family business and that all family members benefit in the manner desired.
• Charitable Planning: The use of charitable gifting techniques to reduce income taxes, gift taxes, estate taxes, and generation-skipping taxes while benefiting a designated charitable organization.
• Charitable Foundations: The creation and operation of charitable organizations that promote religious, social, or educational objectives in a tax-advantageous manner, often in coordination with charitable planning.
• Gifting: The migration of wealth and benefits to children, grandchildren, and other individuals for educational and personal objectives while avoiding gift taxes, estate taxes, and other taxes.
• Wealth Migration: Sophisticated estate planning and tools to migrate wealth to future generations while benefiting the current generation in a creditor-protected and estate-tax protected environment.
• Life Insurance Planning: The use of life insurance in buy-sell planning in the business context, estate tax avoidance planning, and wealth building to provide for the needs of loved ones.
• Retirement Planning: The coordinated planning of retirement assets in conjunction with a sophisticated estate plan to meet the present needs of the current generation and to maximize the future benefits to be received by the junior generation.
• Living Trusts: A technique used in the conjunction with the overall estate plan that provides management of a person's assets during lifetime that can also help to avoid the need for a future guardianship and avoid the need for the probate of a person's estate.
• Irrevocable Trusts: Sophisticated tools to facilitate education planning for children and grandchildren, wealth migration, life insurance planning, and a host of other sophisticated estate planning objectives.
• Estate Tax Returns: The preparation of Federal and State tax returns required to be filed in conjunction with a decedent's estate.
• Gift Tax Returns: The preparation of Federal tax returns required in conjunction with gift planning.
• Asset / Creditor Protection: The arrangement or migration of a person's assets in a manner that takes advantage of state and federal exemptions that prevent or limit a creditor / ex-spouse from confiscating a person's assets.

Business / Tax Planning

• Business Succession Planning: The efficient formation, operation, management, and transfer of management now and in the future of various business entities, with emphasis on tax savings and harmonious family relations in family businesses.
• Asset Preservation/Creditor Protection: The structure, management, and operaton of business and personal assets to minimize their exposure to liabilities and attachment by creditors.
• Franchise Tax Planning: Creation of new entities, structuring of old entities, and the conversion of certain entities, such as a corporation to a partnership in a manner that will allow the continued favorable federal income tax treatment while avoiding Texas franchise taxes.
• Limited Partnerships: The most flexible, tax favorable business entity that can be formed in Texas to own or develop real estate, to own and operate retail and commercial business operations, and to use as a tool in sophisticated estate plans, while providing pass-through income tax treatment and limited liability for its limited partners.
• Limited Liability Companies: A flexible business entity that provides pass-through income tax treatment and limited liability protection for its owners and can be used to operate and manage a variety of business activities.
• Corporations: A business entity that provides limited liability protection to its owners and which may or may not provide pass-through income tax treatment for the business activities of the corporation to its owners. A corporation can be used to operate and manage a variety of business activities.
• General Partnerships: A flexible, informal business structure that provides pass-through income tax treatment to its owners but does not provide limited liability protection to its owners.
• Buy-Sell Planning: The process by which the ownership interest in a business entity can be limited to a select group of owners to insure the successful continued operation of a business entity in the event of death, retirement, or termination of employment.
• Business Tax Planning: The planning, structuring, and operation of businesses in a manner that minimizes income taxes, franchise taxes.
• Buying and Selling of Businesses: The structuring, document drafting, and implementation necessary to buy or sell a business or the assets of a business in the most tax advantageous manner while still achieving the personal goals of the buyer and seller.
• Employment Contracts: The drafting and enforcement of agreements between employers and employees that set out the terms and conditions of employment, the rights of each party, including but not limited to covenants not to compete.
• Retirement, Health, Group Life, and Disability for Businesses: The coordination, planning, development, implementation, and advisability of retirement plans, group health plans, group life plans, and disability plans for businesses.

Probate / Guardianship

• Probate: The administration of a person's estate by filing a person's will in a manner required by law, to pay bills, coordinate required tax returns, marshal assets, and ultimately transfer assets to decedent's designated beneficiaries.
• Guardianship: The procedure by which the personal well-being or the assets of an incapacitated person or a minor child are managed.
• Probate and Guardianship Litigation: The litigation of disputes regarding wills, accountings, contested guardianship hearings and fiduciary responsibility.

Real Estate

• Real Estate Development: The structuring, drafting of documents, and implementation of the necessary steps to develop residential subdivisions, apartment complexes, self-storage units, commercial and retail projects, and residential housing units.
• Homeowners Associations: The formation, operation, and maintenance of homeowners associations for residential and commercial developments.
• Real Estate Document Preparation: The drafting and review of documents necessary to purchase residential, commercial, and farm and ranch properties. As well as the loan documentations necessary to secure mortgage financing or refinancing or any of the foregoing.
• Foreclosures: The process by which properties are repossessed when a borrower fails to make required payments or meet other requirements under their loan documents.
• Mortgage Lending Negotiation: The negotiation and drafting of mortgage loan documents necessary for a borrower to receive loan funding from a financial institution or an individual.
• Earnest Money Contracts: The drafting and review of real estate contracts to purchase or sell residential, commercial, and farm and ranch properties.
• Owner-Finance Transactions: The drafting and implementation of all the necessary documents for an individual or business entity to sell its property or assets to a third party and carry the note.
• Sales of Personal Property: The drafting and review of documents necessary for the sale and transfer for personal property.
• Commercial and Residential Leases: The drafting and enforcement of leases for both commercial and residential purposes.
• Title Examinations and Curative Matters: The review of title commitments, title policies, and other legal documents to ascertain the correct title ownership of real property and the drafting and implementation of curative matters affecting that real property to remove any clouds or hindrances on title that would prevent its sale to a third party.
• Condemnation: Representing landowners whose property is targeted for acquisition by city, county, and state governments to insure that the landowner receives a fair and adequate price when the property is acquired by the government entity.
• Real Estate Litigation: The litigation of title, boundry lines, restrictions, and easement issues.

Commercial Litigation

• The litigation of business ownership and valuation issues, contract disputes, employee matters, conflicts with third-parties, construction disputes and collection matters.

• The litigation of personal injury claim and damages, consumer and professional liability claims and damages.

Except as noted, not certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.