Estate planning for Montana business owners

What the plan includes

A Clearstone plan is built around a revocable living trust and includes everything needed to put it into effect.

• Revocable living trust, individual or joint
• Pour-over will, with guardian nominations where there are minor children
• Financial power of attorney, healthcare power of attorney and advance directive
• Provisions directing who manages and who receives the company, drafted to work with its operating or shareholder agreement
• Lifetime trusts for children and other beneficiaries where appropriate
• Funding: deeds, beneficiary designations and transfers completed with the firm
• A bound plan with a plain-language summary and instructions for the people you have named

Fee

Trust-based plans are prepared for a fixed fee, quoted in writing before engagement. The fee covers the plan, funding and signing. There is no hourly billing for estate planning.

Where a trust is not warranted, a will-based plan is prepared on the same terms. Irrevocable and specialized trusts are prepared as the situation requires.

Who this is for

Owners of companies, professional practices and agricultural operations, where the business is the largest asset. It provides for incapacity as well as death: who manages the company, who signs for it, and who is paid while you cannot. The plan addresses control and succession, liquidity for the family, including how life insurance funds the buy-sell and replaces the owner's income, fairness among children in and out of the business, and provisions for key employees. The trust is coordinated with buy-sell, operating and shareholder agreements, which are reviewed or drafted alongside it.

The firm

Clearstone Law is a Montana corporate, commercial and private wealth firm based in Billings, serving clients across the state. Estate plans are prepared alongside the firm's business law and private client work.

Where a client's exposure or holdings warrant it, the firm prepares an integrated plan: entity structuring, exemption planning, insurance review and trust design together.