Payne & Jones attorneys counsel families facing the challenges of estate planning and probate with creative and reliable solutions. The firm has provided legal assistance to hundreds of clients, with a wide range of estates, from the small-but--growing to the large and complex. Regardless of the size of the estate, Payne & Jones is dedicated to facilitating the client's objectives while minimizing the federal and state transfer tax burden.

     The firm's attorneys are knowledgeable and experienced in utilizing effective tools to create personally tailored estate plans. Our attorneys are well versed in drafting wills, living trusts, insurance trusts, marital trusts, declaratory trusts (including minor trusts) and charitable giving alternatives (including charitable lead and remainder trusts and private foundations).

     For many of the firm's clients, passing family businesses to succeeding generations is a primary objective. While business succession can raise complex tax and business issues, the firm has developed successful solutions to these issues through effective use of insurance trusts, ESOPs, buy-sell agreements, gifting programs to children and grandchildren, generation-skipping gift programs and other tax planning alternatives.

     Even with the best estate planning, problems can and do arise in probate. Payne & Jones has been called upon by its clients to represent executors, trustees, creditors and beneficiaries in both adversarial and non-adversarial probate proceedings. As part of a complete probate practice, Payne & Jones handles adoptions, name changes, conservatorships and receiverships. With experience in both Kansas and Missouri, the firm is well known and respected among the probate bar.

     Payne & Jones attorneys also provide personal assistance in creating creative solutions to issues arising from relationships with children, spouses from second marriages, and with financial planning aspects of divorce.