Ellen Williamson Law, PC

09/26/2026

Thinking of adding your child as a joint owner on your account? Dallas estate planning and probate attorney Ellen Williamson explains why this well-intentioned estate planning shortcut often backfires and shares better options.

09/21/2026

If you’re old enough to understand the references in these memes, when was the last time you reviewed your estate plan? ;) If it’s been awhile or you still haven’t gotten around to it, reach out and we’ll help. At Ellen Williamson Law, we can’t stop time, but we can ensure your family is covered no matter what tomorrow brings.

09/20/2026

Proud to have been selected by my peers for another year!

09/16/2026

As I often say, even if a client has never gone to an estate planning lawyer before, they're almost always done some estate planning already, often without fully understanding the consequences. In this blog post, I explain why adding your adult child as an owner of your bank account or house, while well-intended, is usually the wrong move.

Adding a child to a bank account or deed can create real risks and doesn't avoid probate the way most people think. Better options exist under Texas law.

09/15/2026

Jimmy Buffett had a comprehensive estate plan. But it sounds like the plan he had didn’t accurately reflect the reality of the family dynamics, or maybe he never had a conversation with his wife about why he named a co-trustee to serve alongside her. Most of us won’t have an estate worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but family conflict guarantees that even small estate administration will be more expensive and drawn out than it otherwise would be. Sadly, there is no upper limit o how much litigation can cost when one party is determined to use it as a weapon. It’s important to make sure your plan matches the family you actually have, with any complicated dynamics that may entail, instead of an idealized version.

Jimmy Buffett, king of the chill beachcombing lifestyle, thought he had set up a smooth plan to pass along his $275 million trust. But family—and fortune—are hard to predict.

09/11/2026

For the 3rd straight year, our office volunteered at the Dallas Bar Association’s Wills for Heroes pro bono clinic for first responders and this year, their spouses too. I prepared plans for 3 couples and Hibba served as notary and witness for dozens of signings. It was a great experience and glad we could honor this day by giving back to those who put themselves in harm’s way to keep us safe.

09/03/2026

Dolly Parton’s death shines a light on a common problem: the health of caregivers often suffers while they focus on the needs of their loved one. Her story is unique in so many ways but in this, her family’s story is familiar.

Dolly Parton did so much in her life to help others. In her final days, I think she did one last thing that will help millions of people, if we pay attention to her warning and take action. Just four days before she died, Parton said that she was being treated for health problems that she “didn’...

08/11/2026

I recently remembered an old Dilbert comic and looked it back up. It was funny back when it was first published decades ago, but it seems even more relevant now with AI and other technological advances that enable lawyers to handle tasks more quickly and efficiently.

The comic is funny because it's true. Under hourly billing, that lawyer got punished for being good at his job. If he'd fumbled around for two hours to produce the same document, he'd have made a lot more money for a worse client experience.

That's backwards. If a lawyer can do excellent work quickly, that's not a discount — that's the payoff of experience. A plan done well in less time isn't worth less than one that took longer. If anything, it's worth more: same result, less of the client's time and money spent getting there.

That's a big part of why I moved Ellen Williamson Law to flat fees for most estate planning, probate, and guardianship work.

The shift to flat fees also did something I didn't fully anticipate: it made a case manager model practical. When you're not billing by the hour, having an experienced paralegal handle the parts of a matter they're best positioned to handle isn't "diluting" the client's time with the attorney — it's the client getting a better, higher-touch experience while enabling me to stay focused on the work that actually needs my judgment. Everyone's incentives point in the same direction: toward getting it right, efficiently, at every step. We don't have to be like Dilbert's sad-sack World's Fastest Worker!

05/24/2026

You probably haven't read the Texas Estates Code.
But our legal system assumes that you have.
And if you don't create an estate plan of your own, it assumes that you agree with the one the State of Texas wrote for you.

05/24/2026

You probably haven't read the Texas Estates Code.
But our legal system assumes that you have.
And if you don't create an estate plan of your own, it assumes that you agree with the one the State of Texas wrote for you.