What we do Estate Planning
Everything you own will one day change hands. An estate plan decides how.
There are two versions of that day. In one, your family follows a plan you wrote, privately, with someone you chose in charge. In the other, a court applies Oklahoma’s default rules, in public, on the court’s calendar. The difference is a set of documents most people put off for a decade and finish in weeks.
What this covers
- Beneficiary audit
- Titling review
- Trust funding
- Attorney coordination
- Legacy structuring
- Family conversations
Why do estate plans fail?
Almost never at the drafting. They fail on funding and titling. A beneficiary designation on a retirement account or life insurance policy passes that asset directly and overrides what the will says. Baldwin Financial, a fee-only fiduciary adviser in Oklahoma City, reconciles beneficiaries, titling and trust funding against your documents every year, alongside your attorney.
Source: IRS, Estate Tax
Start here
What an estate plan answers.
Strip the Latin away and an estate plan answers three questions. Who gets what you own. Who is in charge of making that happen. And who decides for you, medically and financially, if a day comes when you cannot decide for yourself.
That third question is the one people forget, and it is the one most likely to matter while you are alive. Estate planning is not preparing to die. It is deciding, while everything is calm, so that nobody you love ever has to guess.
The documents
Six documents, in plain English.
Every estate plan is assembled from a short list of documents, and none of them requires a law degree to understand. Here is what each one actually does, and what happens when it is missing.
Last will and testament
Names who inherits what, who is in charge of carrying it out, and who raises minor children.
Oklahoma statute decides all three, and a judge chooses the guardian.
Revocable living trust
A container you own and control while you are alive. Whatever it holds passes directly to the people you named, without a court involved.
Everything titled in your name alone goes through probate first.
Pourover will
The safety net behind a trust. Anything accidentally left outside the trust at death gets swept into it.
Stray assets follow the intestacy statute instead of your trust.
Financial power of attorney
Someone you chose can pay the mortgage, run the accounts and sign what needs signing if you cannot.
Your family petitions a court for guardianship over you, while the bills wait.
Advance health care directive
Your medical wishes, written down while you can still make them, and the person who speaks for you if you cannot.
The hardest decisions land on your family in a hospital hallway, guessing.
Guardianship nominations
Who raises your children if both parents are gone, chosen by you, in writing.
A judge decides, hearing from whoever shows up to ask.
One more thing rides alongside all of these: the beneficiary designations on your retirement accounts and life insurance. Those forms pass money directly and outrank the will, which is why we reconcile them against your documents every year rather than assuming they agree.
The part nobody explains
What probate actually is.
When someone dies, somebody has to move what they owned to the people who should have it. For anything titled in the deceased person’s name alone, only a court can do that retitling. That court process is probate, and it has four parts.
The filing
The will is submitted to the court and an executor is appointed. From this moment the process, and the will itself, are public record.
The inventory
Everything owned has to be found, valued and reported to the court. Every account, every deed, every debt.
The waiting
Creditors get a legally required window to make claims. Whatever else happens, the calendar does not move faster than the statute allows, and months pass.
The distribution
After court costs, fees and any claims are paid out of the estate, what remains finally transfers. Your family waits at the end of the line the whole way.
And if there is no will at all, Oklahoma already has an estate plan for you. It is called intestate succession. It was written by the legislature, it has never met your family, and it does not know what you meant.
A general description of how probate works, not legal advice and not a prediction about any particular estate.
The real question
A will or a trust.
Both can carry an estate. They do it very differently, and the difference is mostly about what your family experiences after. A will is a set of instructions for the probate court. A trust is how the court never gets involved.
| What matters | A will | A revocable trust |
|---|---|---|
| Probate | Goes through it. A will is instructions for the court. | Skipped entirely, for everything the trust holds. |
| Privacy | Public record, including what you owned and who got it. | Private. No filing, no public inventory. |
| If you become incapacitated | Silent. A will only speaks at death. | Your successor trustee steps in the same day, without court. |
| Property in more than one state | A separate probate in each state. | One trust holds all of it. |
| When children inherit | At the age of majority, all at once. | On the schedule you set, at the ages you choose. |
| Effort up front | Less. Simpler to sign, simpler to finish. | More. It has to be funded, which means retitling what it holds. |
- Nearly everything you own already carries a beneficiary designation
- You are earlier in building, and simplicity today matters most
- Your estate would pass cleanly to one or two adults
- You mainly need the authorities: powers of attorney and health care directives
- You own a home, or property in more than one state
- You have minor children, or heirs who should not inherit all at once
- You would rather your family skip the courthouse, and keep the details private
- A business interest, a blended family, or an heir with special needs is involved
We will tell you plainly which side of that line you are on, including when the smaller plan is the right one. Selling you a trust you do not need would cost us the thing this firm runs on.
How it works from here
Design it together
One conversation, usually this one. Who inherits, who is in charge, who raises the kids, what stays private. Plain questions, decided out loud.
Attorney approved drafting
Your documents are drafted by licensed attorneys, specific to Oklahoma or whichever state governs.
Sign, fund, keep it true
You sign with a notary. Then the part most firms skip: we help retitle what the trust should hold, align every beneficiary form, and re-check all of it annually.
After the signing
The reason plans hold up here.
Most estate plans fail years after the lawyer’s office, quietly: a trust nobody funded, a refinance that pulled the house back out, a beneficiary form from an old job outranking everything signed since. So every year we reconcile every account, title and beneficiary against what your documents intend, and hand anything that disagrees to your attorney. Signing is the start of the work, not the end of it.
An illustration of how we track a household’s documents, not a client record.
Where it lives
Your trust stays secure, and your family can find it.
A plan nobody can locate is not a plan. Your documents, your beneficiaries and how everything is titled live in your own encrypted vault, stored securely online and permissioned so your attorney, your executor and the people who will one day need them can actually reach them. The login is yours, not ours, and it stays with you for as long as you are a client.
What it costs
Three plans. You already know which one is yours.
These are the platform’s fees for preparing the documents, charged to you directly by the platform. They are not ours, we receive no part of them, and they sit outside our advisory fee entirely. Complexity can move them, which is why each says from rather than a flat number.
One person, keeping it simple
Wills-based plan
From$750
For an estate that passes cleanly, where a will and the right authorities do the job.
- Last will and testament
- Financial power of attorney
- Advance health care directive
- Guardianship nominations
One person, with property
Individual trust
From$1,500
For one person with property, a business interest, or a reason to keep the transfer private.
- Revocable trust and pourover will
- Financial power of attorney
- Advance health care directive
- Guardianship nominations
- Funding and titling guidance
A married couple
Joint trust
From$2,500
For a married couple who own most things jointly, where both halves of the plan have to agree.
- Joint revocable trust and pourover wills
- Powers of attorney for both spouses
- Health care directives for both spouses
- Guardianship nominations
- Funding and titling guidance
Every plan includes the complete platform. No starter tier, and nothing useful held back behind an upgrade. It comes with all three plans, for as long as you are a client, at no additional charge.
Who we serve
Estates that know what you built.
A practice, a partnership stake and a company do not pass to the next generation the way a house does. The plan has to know which one it is holding.
Physicians, dentists and orthodontists
A practice does not pass under a will the way a house does. Succession provisions, titling, and who can legally step in matter as much as the documents themselves, and guardianship decisions cannot wait for someday.
Succession is decided in the documents, or it is decided in court.
Where the work concentrates
- Practice succession provisions
- Asset titling and protection
- Guardianship decisions
- Beneficiary alignment
- Trust funding for the practice
Corporate executives, partners and attorneys
Deferred compensation and unvested equity have their own rules about death, written by the plan documents rather than by your will. The estate plan has to read them first, then line every beneficiary up with what you actually meant.
A beneficiary form from an old job can outrank everything signed since.
Where the work concentrates
- Equity and deferred comp at death
- Beneficiary alignment across plans
- Trust design for concentrated stock
- Estate tax exposure modeling
- Document and titling review
Entrepreneurs and small business owners
The estate plan decides who signs on Monday morning if you are gone on Friday. Buy-sell agreements, control, and the estate tax on an illiquid company are decisions to make now, on purpose, while they are still yours to make.
The company should never learn who is in charge from a courtroom.
Where the work concentrates
- Buy-sell agreement review
- Succession and control decisions
- Estate tax on an illiquid business
- Trust funding and titling
- Family communication plan
Questions we get
Asked often enough to answer here.
Do you write the documents?
No. Baldwin Financial does not practice law and does not draft or prepare legal documents. Licensed attorneys do that, specific to your state, whether that is your own attorney or one in our estate platform’s network. We do the planning and coordination around them, and we make sure the drafting starts from the full picture rather than from half of it.
Can we change it later?
Yes. A revocable trust is revocable: amend it, restate it, or unwind it as life changes. Wills are replaced the same way. The plan you sign is the plan for now, and updating it as your life moves is part of what the annual review is for.
How long does this take?
The design conversation is usually one meeting, often this one. The documents are drafted from those decisions, you sign with a notary, and then funding and beneficiary work follows. The pace is mostly yours; nothing about it needs to take months.
We already have a trust. Is that enough?
Only if it was funded. An unfunded trust is a set of instructions for assets it does not hold, and it is the single most common gap we find. Checking is quick, and worth doing this year rather than next.
Do we use our attorney or yours?
Either. If you have an attorney you trust, we work alongside them. If you do not, your documents are prepared through our estate platform’s attorney network, and the annual reconciliation works the same either way.
What does an estate plan cost?
A wills-based plan starts at $750, an individual trust at $1,500, and a joint trust at $2,500. Those fees are charged directly by the unaffiliated platform that prepares the documents. We receive none of it. Our own advisory fee is separate and is set out in our Form ADV Part 2A.
Do we pay extra for the platform?
No. Every plan includes the whole platform, and it stays available for as long as you are a client. There is no starter tier and nothing useful held back behind an upgrade.
Where do our documents live?
In your own encrypted vault, stored securely online with the unaffiliated platform we use to hold and organize estate documents, beneficiaries and titling in one place, so you and your family can find them without calling anyone. Your login is yours, not ours.
Keep going
The other three.
We do not offer these separately. They are four views of the same set of decisions.
An invitation
You have meant to do this for years.
Today it is one decision, and we carry the rest.
A complimentary conversation, by video, phone, or in person in downtown Oklahoma City, whenever suits you. Nothing to prepare and nothing to bring. Come as you are; leave knowing more than you arrived with.
What the conversation looks like
- 01
You talk. What you own, what you owe, who depends on you, and whatever is coming up that you have not solved yet.
- 02
We tell you what we see. The two or three things we would look at first, and why those and not the rest.
- 03
You decide, on your own time. If we are not the right fit, we will say so and point you toward someone who is.
Or reach us directly
- Phone
- (405) 266-7856
- Serving
- Oklahoma City, Edmond, Nichols Hills, and clients who have moved away
Estate planning services described on this page use Wealth.com, an unaffiliated third-party platform, and naming it is not an endorsement or a testimonial. Wealth.com is not a law firm. Baldwin Financial, LLC does not practice law, does not draft or prepare legal documents, and does not provide legal advice. Documents are prepared by licensed attorneys in the platform’s network, specific to the state that governs, and this page is general education about how these instruments typically work, not legal advice about your situation. Fees shown are starting fees charged directly to the client by Wealth.com for preparing estate documents through its attorney network. Baldwin Financial, LLC does not charge these fees and receives no portion of them, and they are not included in and are separate from Baldwin Financial’s advisory fee, which is described in our Form ADV Part 2A. Actual amounts depend on the complexity of your situation and are confirmed before work begins. Recording fees, notary fees and any charges assessed by a county or an attorney outside the platform are not included.