An estate plan is a design for the people you love.
Estate planning in West Chester and Chester County, PA. Documents alone are not a plan. A comprehensive plan is documents, beneficiaries, taxes, and gifting working as one design, revisited as your family and your legacy change.
Most estates skip federal tax. Almost none skip Pennsylvania's.
The federal estate tax touches only estates above roughly $15 million per person as of 2026. Pennsylvania's inheritance tax has no such threshold. It applies from the first dollar, based on who inherits. That makes it the estate tax most Chester County families actually pay, and the one most plans ignore.
- Surviving spouse 0%
- Children, grandchildren & other lineal heirs 4.5%
- Siblings 12%
- Other heirs 15%
Pennsylvania inheritance tax rates as of 2026. Transfers to qualifying charities are exempt — one reason charitable planning and estate planning belong in the same conversation.
What a coordinated estate plan covers.
We are not attorneys and we do not draft legal documents. We do the work around the documents. The coordination that determines whether they actually accomplish what you intended.
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Document & Attorney Coordination
Working alongside your estate attorney so wills, trusts, and powers of attorney reflect your full financial picture. As your life evolves, so will your requirements.
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Beneficiary Alignment
Retirement accounts, life insurance, and transfer-on-death designations pass outside your will. We audit every designation against the plan, because an outdated beneficiary form overrides the best-drafted will in Pennsylvania.
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Tax Exposure Design
Modeling Pennsylvania inheritance tax and federal estate tax exposure together, and building the response into your broader tax planning rather than treating it as a separate problem.
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Gifting With Intention
Annual exclusion gifts, education funding, and larger lifetime transfers are designed so giving while living reduces what is taxed at death without compromising your own retirement income.
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Business Owner Succession
If a business is your largest asset, your estate plan and your exit plan are the same plan. Buy-sell agreements, valuation, and liquidity for the tax bill all have to be designed together.
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The Generation After
Preparing children and grandchildren for the responsibilities of wealth. The conversations, the governance, the intention. When wealth spans generations, estate planning grows into legacy planning.
The 10 most common estate mistakes.
Most estate problems are not caused by bad documents. They are caused by documents nobody revisited. The beneficiary form from two marriages ago, the trust that was never funded, the plan that assumed the law would never change. Check your own plan against the list.
Estate planning, answered.
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I already have a will. Isn't that enough?
A will is necessary and insufficient. It does not control retirement accounts or life insurance, it does not address Pennsylvania inheritance tax, and it does nothing if it sits unrevised while your family and the law change. The plan is everything around the will.
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Do you replace my estate attorney?
No — we work with them, and we can introduce you to attorneys we trust if you need one. We do not draft legal documents. Our role is coordination: making sure the legal work, the tax strategy, and the investment plan are one design, with us as your single point person.
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What's the difference between estate planning and legacy planning?
Estate planning is the mechanics — documents, taxes, beneficiaries. Legacy planning is the purpose — what the wealth is for, how the next generation is prepared for it, and what you want your giving to say. Done well, the first serves the second.
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When should I revisit my estate plan?
After any major life event — marriage, divorce, a birth, a death, a business sale — and roughly every three to five years regardless, because tax law does not sit still. Most of the plans we review have not been touched in over a decade.
When was your estate plan last reviewed?
Bring whatever documents you have — or none at all. One meeting, no obligation, based in West Chester and serving families across Chester County.
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