Family Law, Divorce, Pre and Post-marital Agreements in Estate Planning

Partition Agreements, Prenuptial and Postnuptial Agreements

In order to protect our clients, when we are doing estate planning, we frequently also have to consider issues related to family law and divorce. Family law includes not only divorce but prenuptial agreements, post marital agreements, cohabitation agreements and transmutation agreements. Accurately characterizing property as community and or separate is critical to an effective estate plan.

As a result many estate plans will require "property clarification" agreements particularily for those parties who have moved to Texas from another state or who have inherited significant property from their families.  Our firm regularly prepares and reveiws these agreements for our clients.

Divorce, Mediation and Collaborative Law

Although we will assist our clients in a divorce action we encourage our clients to consider engaging in the alternatives to dispute resolution.  Mediation is the most common dispute resolution process, however, in 2001, Texas became the first state in the United States to enact statutes specifically authorizing a relatively new disputes resolution process called collaborative law. Erin M. Thrash opened the Lake Travis Mediation and Collaborative Law Center in 2006. Many family law practitioners and civil litigators have come to believe that the collaborative law process is a more practical alternative for parties who need to resolve a dispute but who want to try to avoid the divisiveness caused by traditional litigation.