Georgia Estate Planning Lawyer

Georgia is one of the few states that will refuse to honor a handwritten will, no matter how clearly it states what you wanted, and it also has no state estate tax and no inheritance tax, which surprises people who expect a plan to be mostly about taxes. In Georgia, estate planning is far more about paperwork that has to be signed in exactly the right way, property that has to be titled correctly, and the people you choose to act for you. Bowman Law Firm is a Norcross-area Georgia estate planning lawyer that prepares wills, trusts, powers of attorney, advance directives, and Medicaid and asset protection plans for families across Gwinnett County, the rest of metro Atlanta, and communities from Marietta to Gainesville.

Because the state-level tax question is off the table, the real decisions are different ones. Who should step in if you cannot manage your own money? Which of your assets should pass through the probate court, and which should bypass it? Will your documents actually be honored by a bank, a hospital, or a judge when your family needs them? Those are the questions a good Georgia plan answers, and most of them turn on formalities that are easy to get wrong without guidance.

Bowman Law Firm builds each plan around the family sitting in front of us rather than a form. The work starts with a conversation about who depends on you, what you own, and what worries you, and the documents follow from that conversation.

Why Choose Bowman Law Firm for Georgia Estate Planning

Her background is unusually broad for an estate planning lawyer: she has tried cases for a national consumer law firm, served as law clerk to a federal judge in Georgia, and handled personal injury matters on the defense side for a large Florida law firm. That courtroom and chambers experience matters when you are drafting documents meant to survive a challenge, because she has seen from the inside how judges read instruments and where disputes begin.

Clients work directly with an attorney who knows their family and their goals, not a rotating cast of strangers. The firm’s guiding principle is that every client is a person first, a client second, and never a file number, and reviewers describe the results in similar terms: knowledgeable, reassuring, thoughtful, and thorough. Our staff speaks English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, which means a parent and an adult child can sit in the same meeting and understand every provision in the language they are most comfortable with. Virtual consultations are available for clients who cannot come in person.

The process is deliberately simple: a free discovery call, an initial consultation to design your plan for $100, and an in-person signing meeting where the finished documents are presented and explained before you sign anything.

The Documents and Planning Tools a Georgia Estate Plan Can Include

• Revocable living trusts: The centerpiece of most plans we prepare. Georgia requires an express trust to be in writing and signed by the settlor, and a trust can be changed or revoked only if the settlor reserved that power in the document itself, so the drafting of that reservation matters from the start.
• Wills and pour-over wills: Georgia requires a will to be in writing, signed by the testator, and attested by at least two competent witnesses. A pour-over will works alongside a trust to catch any asset that was never retitled, and a will is also where parents name a guardian for minor children.
• Durable financial powers of attorney: Governed by Georgia’s Uniform Power of Attorney Act, which makes a power of attorney durable unless it says otherwise and effective on signing unless you set a later trigger. Your agent’s authority ends at your death.
• Advance directives for health care: Names a health care agent and records your treatment wishes, so that doctors and family are not guessing during a crisis.
• Asset protection and Medicaid planning: Trust structures and timing strategies aimed at preserving savings and the family home when long-term care becomes a possibility, including the use of LLCs held in trust for business and investment property.
• Spendthrift, testamentary, and dynasty trusts: Tools for heirs who are young, who struggle with money, or who face creditor problems, and for keeping wealth in the family across generations.
• Trust funding, amendments, and administration: The follow-through that makes a trust real: retitling property, updating documents after life changes, and guiding successor trustees through their duties.
• Digital asset provisions: Georgia’s fiduciary access law lets you spell out whether your executor or agent may see your email, cloud storage, and online accounts, which is increasingly where family photographs and financial records live.

Signing Requirements That Decide Whether Your Georgia Documents Hold Up

Most estate planning failures are not dramatic. They are a missing witness, a misunderstood signature rule, or a trust that was signed and never funded. Georgia is precise about execution, and each document type has its own rules. A will must be signed by you, or by another person in your presence and at your direction, and attested by two competent witnesses; the witnesses must sign for themselves, because no one else may sign a witness’s name even at the witness’s request. Georgia does not require a will to be notarized, though a self-proving affidavit can make it easier to admit to probate later. Oral wills are not valid, and neither are handwritten wills that lack witnesses. A codicil, meaning an amendment to a will, has to be executed with the same formality as the will itself, which is why scribbling a change in the margin of an old will accomplishes nothing.

Powers of attorney follow a different recipe. Under Georgia’s power of attorney statute, the principal signs, a competent witness attests, and the signing is also attested before a notary or other officer authorized to administer oaths, who cannot be the same person as the witness. All of these signatures and attestations are performed in the presence of everyone involved. Advance directives are different again: no notary is required, but two witnesses of sound mind who are at least 18 must attest. Neither may be your chosen health care agent, someone who will knowingly inherit from you or gain financially from your death, or anyone directly involved in your care, and no more than one may be an employee or agent of the facility where you are being treated. A power of attorney signed in another state is generally honored in Georgia if it was valid where it was signed, and an out-of-state advance directive that was valid where executed is likewise treated as compliant.

We handle execution as a supervised event for exactly this reason. The signing meeting is where a carefully drafted plan either becomes enforceable or quietly fails, and it deserves the same attention as the drafting.

Trusts, Creditors, and Medicaid: What Georgia Law Does and Does Not Protect

A revocable trust is excellent for privacy and for keeping your family out of probate court, but it is not a shield against creditors. Under Georgia’s trust code, property in a trust you can revoke remains reachable by your creditors during your lifetime, spendthrift language or not, and after your death it can be reached to the extent your probate estate cannot cover your debts. For an irrevocable trust you created for your own benefit, your creditors can reach the most that could be paid to you or for your benefit. This is why we explain, before recommending a structure, exactly what a given trust will and will not accomplish, rather than letting a family believe a living trust is something it is not.

Spendthrift provisions protect a beneficiary’s interest from creditors, but only if the language bars both voluntary and involuntary transfers, and even then they do not stop claims for alimony, child support, taxes and other government claims, tort judgments, criminal restitution, or judgments for necessaries. Understanding those carve-outs helps you decide whether a trust for a troubled heir will really do what you hope.

Long-term care planning is where timing becomes the whole game. Georgia Medicaid looks back 60 months at transfers made for less than fair market value, and a gift inside that window triggers a penalty period of ineligibility calculated by dividing the transferred amount by a monthly divisor that the state revises annually. The penalty does not begin to run until the applicant is otherwise eligible, meaning in a facility or waiver program, spent down to the asset limit, and applied. Eligibility also turns on asset and income limits, a protected allowance for a spouse who remains at home, and a cap on home equity, all of which are adjusted periodically and should be confirmed at the time you plan. The practical lesson is that families who start years ahead have real options, while families who start after a diagnosis often have very few.

What to Do and Where to Go When You Are Ready to Put a Plan in Place

Start by gathering a simple picture of your situation: the deeds to your real estate, statements for bank, brokerage, and retirement accounts, life insurance policies, business ownership documents, and the beneficiary designations already on file. Beneficiary forms on retirement accounts and life insurance override your will, so they have to be coordinated with whatever plan you build. Then think through the people questions, because they are the hard part: who should serve as your agent, your trustee, your executor, and your children’s guardian, and who should serve as backup for each. Many families name one person for everything out of habit; separating those roles often works better, since the person best suited to make medical decisions may not be the person best suited to manage investments.

If someone close to you has already died or become incapacitated without documents, the courts get involved. Estate administration, the probate of wills, and guardianships and conservatorships for minors and incapacitated adults are handled by the probate court of the county where the person lived: the Probate Court of Gwinnett County sits in Lawrenceville and accepts electronic filing through eFile GA, while families in neighboring counties deal with the probate courts of Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Forsyth, or Hall County, each of which has its own clerk and local filing practices. Because probate courts are county-specific, a plan drafted with your home county in mind can reduce friction for the people left to carry it out.

Common mistakes are consistent from family to family. People sign a trust and never retitle the house or accounts into it. They name a minor or a spouse as sole beneficiary without a backup. They rely on a handwritten note, which Georgia will not honor as a will. They put an adult child on a bank account as a shortcut, exposing the account to that child’s creditors and divorce. And they let a plan sit untouched through a marriage, divorce, move, new grandchild, or business sale. A review every three to five years, and after any major event, catches most of these before they become problems.

Georgia Estate Planning Questions Families Ask Us

Do I need an estate plan if my estate is modest?

Yes. If you own a home, have a retirement account, or have children, you benefit from naming guardians, choosing who makes medical and financial decisions, and deciding who inherits. Without documents, Georgia law and the courts make those choices using a fixed formula.

Does Georgia have an estate tax or inheritance tax?

No. Georgia levies neither, and the state no longer requires estate tax returns for current decedents. The old state estate tax applied only to people who died before 2005. Large estates may still face federal estate tax, but the federal exclusion is high enough that most families never reach it.

Do I still need a will if I have a trust?

Yes. A pour-over will sweeps any asset you never transferred into the trust and directs it there, and a will is the document where you name a guardian for minor children, which a trust cannot do.

Can I write my own will by hand in Georgia?

A handwritten will is only valid if it meets the same requirements as any other will, including signing in front of two competent witnesses. Georgia does not recognize holographic wills, so a handwritten document without witnesses will not be enforced.

What is the difference between a power of attorney and an advance directive?

A durable financial power of attorney lets your agent handle money, property, and accounts. An advance directive for health care names a health care agent and records your wishes about treatment. They serve different purposes, use different signing rules, and most people need both.

Does my power of attorney end when I die?

Yes. Every power of attorney terminates at the principal’s death. After that, authority passes to your executor under your will or your successor trustee under your trust, which is why those appointments need to be in place as well.

If I buy a trust, can my creditors still reach what is inside it?

If the trust is revocable, yes. Georgia treats the property as available to your creditors while you are alive, and after death to the extent your probate estate cannot pay your debts. Only carefully structured irrevocable planning, created well ahead of any claim, offers meaningful protection.

Can my executor or agent get into my email and online accounts?

Only to the extent you allow it. Georgia’s digital assets law lets you grant or withhold access in your will, trust, or power of attorney, and a direction you give through a provider’s own online tool can override your documents. Even with permission, a fiduciary remains bound by the provider’s terms of service and may not impersonate you.

How long does Medicaid look back at gifts I have made?

Sixty months. A transfer for less than fair market value inside that window can produce a penalty period during which Medicaid will not pay for nursing home care, which is why gifting to children as a last-minute strategy so often backfires.

Should I update my estate plan if I moved to Georgia from another state?

Yes. Out-of-state powers of attorney and advance directives are often honored if valid where signed, but wills, trusts, and beneficiary arrangements should be reviewed against Georgia law, and the practical acceptance of older forms by local banks and hospitals varies. A review also lets you name agents and guardians who live near you.

Is a witness’s age or relationship to me important when signing?

It matters. Georgia sets 14 as the minimum age to make a will and to serve as a will witness, but advance directive witnesses must be at least 18 and cannot be your agent or someone who stands to gain from your death. Choosing disinterested adults avoids later disputes.

How much does it cost to get started with Bowman Law Firm?

We begin with a free discovery call. If you decide to go forward, the initial consultation to design your plan is $100, and you will understand the proposed documents before the signing meeting.

Serving Estate Planning Clients From Norcross Across Metro Atlanta

Starting in Norcross and throughout Gwinnett County, Bowman Law Firm works with families in Peachtree Corners, Duluth, Lilburn, Lawrenceville, Suwanee, and Buford. Along the Buford Highway corridor we serve the diverse communities of Doraville, Chamblee, and Brookhaven, and in north Fulton we prepare trust-based plans for families in Johns Creek, Alpharetta, and Roswell. Clients in the Perimeter area, including Dunwoody and Sandy Springs, work with us as well, along with families in Marietta, Decatur, Cumming, Gainesville, and Dalton. We regularly work with clients living in Gwinnett, Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Forsyth, and Hall counties, and virtual consultations make it possible to plan with us from anywhere in the greater Atlanta area, in English, Spanish, or Vietnamese.

Speak With a Georgia Estate Planning Attorney at Bowman Law Firm

Whether you are creating your first plan, funding a trust you signed years ago, or looking at long-term care costs that are coming faster than you expected, the right time to talk to a Georgia estate planning attorney is before a crisis forces the decisions. Call Bowman Law Firm to schedule your free discovery call, and attorney Shireen Hormozdi Bowman will help you work out what your family needs and what it does not.