Wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and complete estate plans for Alabama families, built to protect your assets and the people you love. Serving Birmingham, Mountain Brook, Hoover, and across Alabama.
Schedule a Consultation Call (205) 202-9801Estate planning is one of the most important things you can do for your family, and one of the most commonly postponed. At Colvin & Sawyer Law Offices, we help families across Birmingham, Mountain Brook, Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Homewood, Alabaster, and throughout Alabama build estate plans that protect their assets, honor their wishes, and spare their loved ones unnecessary pain and expense.
"Estate planning is not about planning for death. It is about protecting the people you love, making sure that if something happens to you, they are taken care of exactly the way you intend."
Most people do not come to an estate planning attorney because they want documents. They come with questions:
The documents are the answer to those questions, not the point of the exercise.
Directs who inherits, names guardians for minor children, and designates a personal representative to carry out your wishes under Alabama law.
Assets properly funded into the trust pass outside probate, keep your estate private, and stay under management if you become incapacitated. See our living trust services.
Names someone to manage your financial affairs if you cannot, which is what keeps a family out of a court-supervised conservatorship.
Designates who makes medical decisions on your behalf when you are unable to, so that authority is not decided in a hospital corridor.
Records your wishes for end-of-life treatment, so your family is not left guessing at the hardest possible moment.
Life insurance, retirement accounts, and payable-on-death accounts pass by designation, not by your will. We check that they agree with the rest of the plan.
This is the question families ask most, and the honest answer is that they do different jobs rather than compete.
A will directs who inherits, names guardians for minor children, and appoints the person who administers your estate. It does not avoid probate. A will is the instruction manual the probate court follows.
A revocable living trust holds assets you transfer into it. Those assets pass to your beneficiaries through your successor trustee without probate, stay private, and remain managed if you become incapacitated. The qualifier matters: a trust only controls what is actually funded into it. An unfunded trust is an expensive folder.
Many Alabama families use both, with the trust as the core plan and a pour-over will as the safety net for anything never retitled. Which combination fits depends on what you own, how it is titled, whether you have minor children, and whether privacy or incapacity planning matters to you. Our guide to living trust versus will in Alabama compares them in detail.
Alabama's intestate succession statutes decide, and the outcome surprises most families. A surviving spouse does not automatically inherit everything. The estate is divided with children or parents under a fixed statutory formula that takes no account of what anyone intended.
Other consequences follow. The estate goes through public probate rather than passing privately. The court, not you, selects the guardian for minor children. Unmarried partners inherit nothing at all, regardless of how long the relationship lasted. Read what happens if you die without a will in Alabama for how the formula actually divides an estate.
Ready to protect your family with a proper Alabama estate plan?
Call Colvin & Sawyer Law Offices at (205) 202-9801 or send us a message. We serve families across Birmingham, Mountain Brook, Hoover, Vestavia Hills, and all of Alabama.After any event that changes who is in your family or what you own: marriage, divorce, a birth, a death among your beneficiaries or named agents, a move to or from Alabama, a significant change in assets, or the sale or purchase of a business. Absent any of those, every three to five years is a reasonable rhythm.
One item deserves its own mention. Alabama adopted the Uniform Power of Attorney Act effective 1 January 2012. Powers of attorney signed on or after that date are durable by default, meaning they survive your incapacity unless the document says otherwise. Documents signed before 2012 needed express durability language to do the same thing. If your power of attorney predates 2012, it is worth confirming it still does what you assume it does.
It depends, and we will tell you what it depends on rather than leaving you to guess. What drives the number:
We explain the expected scope and cost at the consultation, before any work begins. The comparison worth making is not the fee against nothing. It is the fee against what an avoidable probate, a court-appointed conservatorship, or a guardianship dispute costs a family in money and time.
For most families, a few weeks from consultation to signing, and much of that is the time you spend reviewing drafts and deciding. Straightforward plans move faster. Plans involving business interests, property in another state, or special needs provisions take longer because they should.
If there is urgency, a hospital admission, a scheduled surgery, or a diagnosis, say so at the first call. Priorities can be reordered, and the documents that matter most in a crisis are usually the powers of attorney and the advance directive rather than the will.
Estate planning documents are available online for very little, and for some situations they are adequate. What a form does not do is ask the second question.
A form will not notice that your beneficiary designations contradict your will, that the trust you paid for was never funded, that naming the same person as agent and beneficiary creates a conflict, that your out-of-state property needs separate treatment, or that leaving an inheritance outright to a beneficiary on benefits will disqualify them from those benefits.
You are hiring the judgment about which questions apply to your family, and someone accountable for the answer.
Valerie Sawyer focuses her practice on estate planning and probate, helping Alabama families put the right documents in place before they are needed and guiding them through probate when they are. A former special education teacher and Civil Air Patrol Squadron Commander, she is known for translating complicated choices into plain language, and she is a dedicated advocate for Alabama veterans and their families.
Founding attorney Christopher Colvin works alongside Valerie on plans involving business interests and succession, bringing his small business and contract law background to owners who need their company and their estate planned together.
"Valerie guided me through the probate and estate planning process with patience, clarity, and genuine care. Every question I had was answered promptly, and I always felt confident that my best interests were being looked after. I highly recommend Attorney Valerie Sawyer to anyone in need of expert, trustworthy estate planning or probate services."
Without one, Alabama's intestate succession statutes decide who inherits, and the statutory formula may not match what you would have chosen. A plan directs who receives what, names guardians for minor children, appoints the people who act for you if you cannot act for yourself, and can keep assets out of probate when it is structured and funded to do that.
A will, a durable power of attorney for financial matters, a healthcare power of attorney, and an advance directive. Many families add a revocable living trust where avoiding probate or planning for incapacity matters to them. Beneficiary designations on life insurance and retirement accounts should be reviewed alongside all of it, because those pass outside the will entirely.
They do different jobs. A will directs who inherits and names guardians for minor children, but the estate still goes through probate. A revocable living trust holds the assets you transfer into it, and those pass to beneficiaries through your successor trustee without probate. Many families use both, with a pour-over will catching anything never retitled into the trust.
For the assets actually funded into it, yes. That qualifier is the whole answer. A trust controls what has been retitled into it, so property left outside the trust still passes under your will and through probate. Funding is not paperwork at the end of the process, it is what makes the trust do its job.
Alabama's intestate succession statutes decide. A surviving spouse does not automatically inherit everything. The estate is divided with children or parents under a fixed formula, and unmarried partners inherit nothing regardless of the length of the relationship. The court also selects the guardian for any minor children.
It depends on what the plan needs to do. The main drivers are whether it is will-based or trust-based, how complicated your assets are, whether minor children or a beneficiary with special needs require additional provisions, and whether we are building from scratch or updating something sound. We explain the expected scope and cost at the consultation, before any work begins.
After marriage, divorce, a birth, the death of a beneficiary or named agent, a move into or out of Alabama, a significant change in assets, or the sale or purchase of a business. Without any of those, every three to five years is a sensible interval. Powers of attorney signed before 2012 deserve a specific look, because Alabama's durability rules changed that year.
Possibly, but it is worth checking. Alabama adopted the Uniform Power of Attorney Act effective 1 January 2012. A power of attorney signed on or after that date is durable by default, meaning it survives incapacity unless the document says otherwise. One signed before 2012 needed express durability language to achieve the same result, so an older document may not do what you assume.
No to both. Alabama repealed its estate tax and does not impose an inheritance tax. The federal estate and gift tax exemption stands at $15 million per person and $30 million per married couple for 2026, and was made permanent and indexed by legislation signed in July 2025, so the sunset that older articles warn about did not occur.
Alabama's age of majority is 19 rather than 18. Once your child reaches it, you no longer have automatic authority to make medical decisions or access medical and financial information on their behalf. Families with college-age children often put a healthcare power of attorney and a durable power of attorney in place at that point, which is a small piece of planning that matters enormously in an emergency.
Yes, but how it is structured determines whether it helps them. An inheritance left outright can disqualify a beneficiary from needs-based benefits. A trust designed for that purpose can hold the inheritance so it supplements rather than replaces what they receive. This is one of the situations where a standard plan and a drafted plan produce very different outcomes.
Yes. Our office is in Mountain Brook and we work with families across Jefferson and Shelby counties, including Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Homewood, Alabaster, Pelham, Helena, Chelsea, Trussville, Gardendale and Bessemer, as well as Montgomery and elsewhere in Alabama.
Our office is at 4 Office Park Circle in Mountain Brook, and we work with families throughout the Birmingham metro and across Alabama. If you are looking for an estate planning, will, or trust attorney nearby:
Related services: revocable living trusts, probate and estate administration, and business succession planning.
Christopher Colvin and Valerie Sawyer serve clients throughout Birmingham, Mountain Brook, Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Homewood, Alabaster, Pelham, Helena, Chelsea, Trussville, Gardendale, Bessemer, and Montgomery.
Schedule a Consultation Call (205) 202-9801