Estate Planning & Private Client Services

Core Estate Planning

2026 minimum flat fees, set by gross estate

The gross estate is the measure for every tier: the total fair market value of everything you own or control at death, including real property, financial and retirement accounts, business interests, and life insurance you own, before debts, expenses, and deductions are applied.

A married couple, and a married individual planning alone, tier on the household gross estate, both spouses' assets counted together. An unmarried partner tiers on that partner's own estate. The consultation decides the final architecture; every fee is fixed in the engagement letter.

All figures are minimums. A · marks an architecture not offered at that tier; a + marks a stated minimum for the most involved plans. Only the two GST architectures, Clayton w/ GST Subs and Reverse Clayton w/ GST Subs, are offered above $30 million: Beyond the Combined Exemption ($30 million to $45 million) and Family Office Scale (Above $45 million).

Probate avoidance, incapacity protection, and beneficiary structure, before federal transfer tax becomes a planning pressure.

This band is not exemption planning; with a $15 million exemption, few estates here will owe federal estate tax. It is foundational planning for more sizable wealth. The architecture is chosen for control, for creditor and remarriage protection, for the full community-property basis step-up, for business interests, life insurance, and liquidity, and for optionality against a future, smaller exemption. The real design question is who should hold the decision after the first death: the survivor, the fiduciary, or the document itself.

This is where exemption architecture lives. Transfers above the exemption face the 40% federal rate, and the GST exemption cannot be ported between spouses: it is captured at the first death or it is lost. Exempt and non-exempt sub-trusts are the standard of care at this level; the reverse-QTIP election, reserved to our Reverse Clayton, preserves the first spouse's GST exemption across the marital share as well.

Engagements at this level frequently add lifetime strategies: irrevocable life insurance trusts, spousal lifetime access trusts, structured gifting programs, and entity and valuation planning. These are quoted separately or handled hourly.

Component Trusts & Add-Ons

Any tier

Keeping the Plan Current

Amendments & restatements

• CodicilsNot offered. We do not prepare codicils or piecemeal amendments to wills or ancillary documents. A will is changed by executing a new will.
• Trust amendmentsOne amendment only, and only for minor changes, such as a fiduciary substitution or a specific-gift adjustment, and only to instruments we drafted. Even a minor amendment is partner work read against the entire instrument, which the fee reflects. Any second change, or any structural change, is done by restatement.
• RestatementsThe standard of care for new clients, period. A restatement replaces the trust's terms in their entirety while preserving its original date and title, so funding stays intact and nothing needs retitling, and the plan is brought under current law in a single, unambiguous instrument. We do not amend documents drafted by other firms: layering one drafter's amendment onto another's instrument invites error and ambiguity, and it is not the norm. A restatement is the corresponding core plan, delivered on the trust you have already funded, and it is priced from the same schedule above: you are not paying to patch an old document, you are paying for the plan you should have, without retitling a single asset.

When a Flat Fee Is Not Appropriate

2026 hourly rates

Open-ended, contested, or high-volume matters are billed hourly against a retainer.

Hourly rates vary depending on the scope of the matter, the subject matter involved, timing, availability, and other relevant factors. The current hourly schedule is maintained at bolandlawgroup.com/rates/.

The 2026 Landscape

The figures we plan around

Reading the Architecture

The same letters, different machines

The plan names above are not a menu of templates. Each is a different instrument, distinguished by what happens at the first death and, more importantly, by who holds the decision. Choosing the right hands is half the design.

Formula funding: the document decides. Disclaimer: the survivor decides. Clayton election: the fiduciary decides.

A Trust Only (Survivor's Trust)

One continuing trust. The simplest architecture, relying on portability of the federal exemption, suited to first marriages with aligned beneficiaries.

A Trust Only (Blended Family)

The same chassis, hardened. Protective provisions secure each spouse's children where a fully amendable plan would leave them exposed.

A/C (Disclaimer)

Everything passes to the survivor's trust, and the survivor holds a nine-month window after the first death to execute a qualified disclaimer. What is disclaimed drops into the credit shelter trust; it does not become a QTIP, and no marital election is in play. The price of the flexibility is strict: the survivor must not have accepted the benefits of the disclaimed share before disclaiming, may not hold a power of appointment over it, and may direct distributions from it only under an ascertainable standard. The nine-month deadline does not extend.

A/B (Non-Tax / Blended Family)

Here the B share is a control instrument rather than a tax instrument. It becomes irrevocable at the first death, locking the agreed disposition, and unlike a QTIP it can pay income at the trustee's discretion, or sprinkle it among the survivor and the children, rather than mandating all of it to the survivor. The core protection for blended families.

A/B (QTIP / CS)

The decedent's share is drafted to serve either as a credit shelter trust or to receive the QTIP election, with the choice set by the tax and basis picture at the first death rather than guessed at signing.

A/B/C (Non-Clayton)

Three shares fixed by formula at death. The document decides: maximum certainty, minimum post-mortem discretion. Preferred where the couple wants nothing left to later judgment.

A/B/C (Clayton)

The decedent's share passes to a QTIP-able trust, and the fiduciary elects on the Form 706 how much remains marital; whatever is not elected drops into the bypass. Against the disclaimer, Clayton buys time and cleaner hands: the 706 is due nine months after death with an automatic six-month filing extension, the decision belongs to an independent fiduciary rather than a grieving survivor, there is no acceptance-of-benefits risk, and the survivor may hold powers over the bypass that a disclaimer-funded trust forbids.

A/B/C (Clayton w/ GST Subs)

Adds exempt and non-exempt sub-trusts to the Clayton architecture. The share that drops to the bypass is divided, and the exempt sub-trust is funded to a zero inclusion ratio so it can run for grandchildren and beyond free of GST tax. There is no reverse-QTIP election here: the first spouse's GST exemption is allocated through the bypass share.

A/B/C (Reverse Clayton w/ GST Subs)

Our most advanced and most flexible instrument. The Clayton architecture is paired with the reverse-QTIP election, which keeps the first spouse as the transferor of the marital share for GST purposes: the GST exemption, which cannot be ported, is preserved at the first death across both the bypass and the marital shares. Because the election applies to a trust as a whole, the marital share is severed into exempt and non-exempt sub-trusts. The most drafting-intensive plan we write, priced accordingly.