If you have spent a lifetime building a portfolio, you may hold assets that require special management, precise valuation, and a legal strategy as unique as the property itself.
Estate planning isn’t just about who gets what. It’s about preserving the value of what you’ve built and making sure your beneficiaries aren’t left with a legal mess. When your estate includes investment real estate, mineral rights, cryptocurrency, or intellectual property, the stakes are significantly higher.
At Duffley Law, we help Texas families and business owners who need to evaluate their options for securing complex assets and protecting legacies.
What Makes a Texas Estate “Complex”?
True complexity arises from the nature of the assets. Complexity in estate planning is rarely defined by a dollar amount alone. A multi-million dollar bank account is actually quite simple to transfer.
In Texas, we see a specific set of challenges that standard estate plans often fail to address. You might own a ranch with severed mineral rights, a portfolio of rental properties in Houston, or a cold-storage wallet containing significant cryptocurrency holdings.
Each of these asset classes operates under its own set of rules regarding valuation, transfer, and taxation. Failing to account for these specific nuances can lead to assets being frozen in probate, significantly devalued due to mismanagement, or lost entirely.
Real Estate Investment Portfolios
Texas real estate has been a powerful wealth generator. According to the Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center, working land values in Texas jumped an incredible 55% between 2017 and 2022, and total home sales remain high.
For investors holding multiple properties, however, this growth creates a target for liability and a challenge for transfer.
The Risk of Direct Ownership
If you hold title to five rental properties in your personal name, your entire estate is vulnerable to a lawsuit involving just one of them. Furthermore, upon your passing, each property may need to go through probate to transfer to your heirs according to state law.
The Strategy: LLCs and Living Trusts for Rental Real Estate
For complex real estate portfolios, we often recommend a dual-structure approach:
- LLCs: LLCs, short for “limited liability companies,” let you compartmentalize each property into its own “cell.” This can limit liability exposure between properties when structured correctly.
- The Revocable Living Trust: By assigning your LLC interests into a living trust, you confirm that the business operation continues seamlessly upon your death. Your successor trustee can step in and manage the properties, pay taxes, and collect rent without waiting for a probate judge’s permission.
This structure allows for comprehensive estate planning strategies that keep your real estate holdings organized during a transition.
The Texan’s Guide to Oil, Gas, and Mineral Rights
Few assets are as uniquely Texan, or as legally thorny, as mineral rights. If you own working interests or royalty interests, these assets are notorious for causing delays in estate administration.
The Valuation Challenge
Unlike a stock portfolio with a clear daily value, mineral interests are often difficult to appraise.
Best practices require a professional appraisal that considers producing vs. non-producing status, decline curves, and current commodity prices. The IRS creates strict requirements for these valuations, and getting it wrong can trigger audits or tax penalties.
The Transfer Protocol
Many generalist attorneys overlook the mechanics of transferring these rights. It is often not the most effective strategy to simply list “mineral rights” in a will.
- Deed Recording: You often must record new deeds in the specific county where the minerals are located.
- Operator Notification: You may need to formally notify the operator (the oil company) of the ownership change to make sure royalty checks continue flowing to the right person.
Failure to execute these steps (and potentially others) properly can result in royalty payments being held by the operator while your heirs scramble to prove ownership.
Securing Digital Wealth (Crypto & NFTs)
The rise of digital assets has outpaced the slow-moving world of probate law, creating a dangerous gap for investors. While real estate data is abundant, there is a notable lack of statistics on how much crypto is currently locked in Texas estates, largely because much of it is lost when owners die without a plan.
The greatest risk to digital assets is often not theft, but inaccessibility. If your beneficiaries do not have your private keys or seed phrases, the assets are effectively gone forever.
However, you should never write passwords or seed phrases directly into your Will. Wills become public record once filed for probate, meaning you would be publishing your access codes to the world.
Intellectual Property & Collectibles
For business owners, authors, and serious collectors, assets like copyrights, patents, or high-value art collections represent a significant portion of net worth.
Valuation and Liquidity
These assets are often “illiquid,” meaning they cannot easily be sold to pay estate taxes or debts.
- Intellectual Property: You need a plan for who controls the licensing rights. Who decides if your unpublished manuscript gets published? Who manages the patent renewal fees?
- Collectibles: Disputes often arise over the value of items rather than the items themselves. Some people get pre-emptive professional appraisals to establish a baseline value and specific distribution instructions to prevent family infighting.
Choosing the Right Structure for Your Estate Plan
When dealing with more complex assets, many people are essentially choosing between two paths: a will-based plan or a trust-based plan.
The Will (Probate Required)
In Texas, a will is like a set of instructions for a probate judge to approve. Even with a well-drafted Will, your assets generally remain frozen until the court validates the document and an executor is appointed. For complex assets like active businesses or volatile crypto markets, this delay can be financially damaging.
The Revocable Living Trust (Probate Avoidance)
For the assets discussed above, a trust is often the superior vehicle.
- Privacy: Unlike a will, a trust is private. Your portfolio details remain confidential.
- Continuity: A trustee can manage your real estate, mineral rights, and business interests immediately upon your incapacity or death, with no court intervention.
- Protection: You can build “sub-trusts” to protect your beneficiaries’ inheritance from their own creditors or divorce settlements.
If you are currently relying on a simple will, you may be setting your family up for a difficult experience with probate administration. Of course, every situation is different and should be evaluated individually to determine the best tools for the job.
Partnering with a Professional to Protect Your Legacy
Planning for complex assets can greatly benefit from a strategic partner who understands the intersection of Texas property law, digital privacy, and asset protection.
At Duffley Law, our flat-fee pricing for estate planning makes sure you can ask the difficult questions and get comprehensive answers without watching a clock tick. We believe in building plans that work in the real world, confirming that the wealth you’ve worked so hard to build is transferred with clarity and compassion.
If you own unique assets and want to make sure they are protected, we invite you to reach out.