Estate Planning Is Now Available to EWA Clients
Estate planning is now part of your EWA relationship. Designed, coordinated, and reviewed on an ongoing basis by the team that already knows your complete financial picture.
In-House Expertise
Led by Kari Owens, JD
Ongoing Reviews
Your plan, revisited as life changes.
Total Coordination
One team, one process.
Request an Appointment or call (412) 991-1385
Estate Planning, Fully Integrated
For most families, estate planning has meant a referral out the door: an attorney drafts documents, and the plan sits untouched for years. Estate planning is now a core EWA service, living alongside your financial plan, tax preparation, investments, and insurance, built by the team that already knows your family and your finances.
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In-House Expertise
Your plan is led by Kari Owens, JD, EWA’s Senior Estate & Tax Strategist, and EWA manages the entire process from design through signing. You never have to quarterback it yourself.
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A Living Plan, Not a One-Time Event
Most estate plans are drafted once and then sit untouched while everything about your life keeps moving. At EWA, your estate plan is a living part of your financial plan, kept current as your life, your family, and the law change. We address the most important part of your estate plan: the part that happens while you are still living.
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The Complete Picture
Your EWA team handles wills, revocable and irrevocable trusts, financial powers of attorney, healthcare directives, beneficiary designations, account titling, and trust funding.
Estate Planning Is About More Than Taxes
It is how you prepare your family for the unexpected and prepare the next generation to inherit wealth responsibly. A well-built plan can protect assets from divorce and creditors, preserve privacy, avoid unnecessary probate, and coordinate beneficiaries and account titling.
What Your Plan Protects
Protection from Divorce & Creditors
Properly structured trusts help shield what you pass on from a beneficiary’s divorce, lawsuits, and creditor claims, keeping family wealth in the family.
Minimizing Estate & Inheritance Taxes
Exemption levels change, and some estates will owe even at today’s levels. Depending on your state, heirs can face a state estate tax, an inheritance tax, or both. We plan proactively for all of them.
Privacy & Avoiding Probate
Assets that pass through probate become public record. A properly funded plan lets assets transfer directly to your beneficiaries, privately and without court involvement.
Documents Protect the Money. We Prepare the People.
“The best thing you can give your kids is not presents. It is presence.”
Matt Blocki, Founder & CEO, EWA
- Helping vs. Enabling Help builds capacity. Enabling replaces it. We design trusts and distribution structures that build your children’s capability, so money enhances their lives instead of quietly replacing their ambition.
- Providing vs. Rescuing A great plan provides: education, opportunity, a foundation. It does not rescue heirs from every hard thing, because confidence is earned by doing hard things. Your plan can honor both.
- Presence Over Presents The most valuable inheritance is your values, transmitted on purpose. We help you have the conversations most families postpone, so nothing important is discovered at the reading of a will.
Documents are only a piece of the puzzle. We facilitate tough conversations between family members now, while you are living, so your family is aligned long before any document is needed.
What's Included
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Plan Design & Coordination
Your EWA team designs your plan around your family and goals. Coordination is driven by your advisor, from drafting through signing with licensed attorneys. We also inventory your digital assets and prepare the next generation.
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Ongoing Plan Review
As part of ongoing planning, we continually reexamine your documents as your life changes and the law calls for it. We will never waste your time reviewing what does not need to be reviewed.
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Tax-Smart Inheritance Planning
Your personal taxes, your business taxes, and now your trust and estate taxes, all handled in-house. One goal: minimize what the government keeps, and maximize what you keep, and eventually what your beneficiaries keep.
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Titling, Funding & Beneficiaries
Documents get signed, but accounts and beneficiaries never get updated. We audit account titling, trust funding, and every
beneficiary designation so the plan matches your intentions and nothing passes to unintended beneficiaries.
Built by people who know your family. Reviewed for life.
Frequently Asked Questions
Documents drafted years ago under old tax law can now work against you. Some older trust structures cost heirs the step-up in basis with no offsetting benefit, and beneficiary designations and titling drift out of date. We will review what you have, make immediate updates, and monitor your plan as
your life changes.
We start by reviewing your existing documents, beneficiary designations, account titling, family circumstances, and planning goals. Your EWA team identifies what should stay, what should change, and coordinates any necessary legal work through completion.
No. We begin with a review of your existing documents. Often the right answer is targeted updates, retitling, or fixing beneficiary designations rather than
starting from scratch. Other situations call for a complete overhaul of your plan. Either way, we are here to help.
Estate planning is about far more than federal estate tax. A sound plan protects assets from divorce and creditors, preserves privacy, coordinates beneficiary designations and account ownership, plans for incapacity, and helps ensure your wealth passes according to your wishes. Exemptions also move with the political landscape, so we plan proactively without giving up flexibility over your own money.
An attorney engagement typically ends when the documents are signed. At EWA, your estate plan is designed by people who know your complete financial picture, integrated with your tax returns, investments, and insurance, and reviewed as your life and the law change.
For new clients, estate planning is built into EWA’s standard advisory fee schedule. No retainers, no hourly legal bills, and no clock running when you call.
Existing clients have the option to opt into one of three service tiers, with pricing locked in for life. Your advisor will walk you through the specifics and make a recommendation.
Ready to Talk Through Your Plan?
Request an appointment online or call us at (412) 991-1385. Your EWA team will walk you
through what’s included and answer any questions before anything moves forward.
Disclosures
EWA is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice or legal services. All legal work is performed by a licensed estate planning attorney. Your documents are drafted and executed by EWA Estate Planning, a separate entity from EWA, LLC.
For specific disclosures on how our estate planning setup works, view our estate planning disclosures.