Ashford & Vale is a four-partner estate practice. We draft wills, trusts, and succession plans for families and founders who would rather have one lawyer who knows the whole story than a building of associates who don't. Our work is meant to be read once, in twenty years, and still hold.
Estate work is mostly listening. We sit with families across two or three generations, learn the shape of the wealth and the shape of the people, and only then begin drafting. Each engagement is led by a partner from intake to execution — and stays with that partner for the life of the document.
Wills, durable powers of attorney, healthcare directives, and the careful conversations that make them mean something. We draft to be read aloud — by a son, a daughter, a probate judge — and still feel exact.
Revocable, irrevocable, dynastic, charitable. We design trust architecture to outlast statutes, software, and the trustees who'll step into seats no one has filled yet. The instrument is only as good as the next generation's understanding of it.
When a death has occurred, we step in quietly — handle the court, the creditors, the appraisals, the difficult conversations between siblings — and bring the estate to a clean close. Most of our administration matters never see a courtroom.
Family businesses fail at the seam between generations far more often than at the market. We draft buy-sell agreements, voting structures, and transfer mechanics that let a closely-held company change hands without changing character.
Most estate plans fail in translation — not in drafting. Our job is to make sure the document still sounds like the person, twenty years after they've stopped speaking.
Four partners. Two of counsel. A senior paralegal who has been here twenty-six years. The structure is intentional — it means the lawyer who drafts your trust is the one who funds it, the one who answers your daughter's call in 2041, and the one who walks her through what her father wanted.
We don't take volume work. We don't bill in six-minute increments. We charge a flat engagement fee, agreed in writing, and we hold to it.
A first consultation runs ninety minutes. There is no charge. We will not draft anything that day; we will simply listen, take notes, and tell you, plainly, whether we are the right firm for the matter you are bringing.