Estate Planning Service in Jefferson County
Get One Plan for Everything You’ve Built
Our estate planning service in Jefferson County, Colorado, lines up your trust, will, business interests, and beneficiary forms so every piece points to the same direction.
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Reviews From Colorado Families
Comprehensive Estate Planning in Jefferson County
What a Complete Plan Involves
August & Suchowski builds comprehensive estate plans for families throughout Jefferson County, Colorado. A complete plan is a set of instruments designed to operate together, which is different from owning several documents.
The work starts with what you hold. Real property, retirement accounts, life insurance, and interests in closely held entities, meaning privately owned businesses rather than public shares. Each of those transfers under its own rules. We align the trust, the will, and every beneficiary designation so none of them contradicts another at the moment they take effect.
Business Owners, Blended Families, and Multi-State Holdings
The families our Jefferson County estate planning team works with usually have a specific complication. A company with partners. Children from two marriages. Property in three states and no plan for any of it.
What they say is consistent. "I don't want my kids fighting over the business." "My wife's children and mine need to be treated differently." "Nobody has looked at this since 2009."
Planning Informed by Estate Administration
Michael Suchowski leads estate planning at August & Suchowski and has practiced law since 2000, focusing on plans built around a family's actual assets and goals. Elizabeth August administers estates and trusts from our Wheat Ridge office, including matters involving closely held family businesses.
That pairing is deliberate. Plans drafted without seeing how estates settle tend to fail in predictable ways. Both attorneys are licensed in Colorado, and this firm handles nothing outside estate planning and probate.
Reviewing a Plan Before Circumstances Force It
The trigger is typically a change rather than a date. Selling a business, acquiring property in another state, a remarriage, or a beneficiary whose circumstances have shifted. Plans signed years ago and never revisited are the ones that surprise families.
Our Wheat Ridge office responds to new inquiries within one business day, and the initial consultation is free. Comprehensive planning is quoted after that conversation, since scope depends on holdings, and we name the fee model before drafting begins.
Serving Jefferson County and Colorado
Comprehensive planning runs from our Wheat Ridge office, covering Lakewood, Arvada, Golden, Westminster, and Edgewater within approximately ten miles. Michael also meets clients by video throughout the state.
Property held outside Colorado requires coordination with the recording office in each state, since real estate follows the law where it sits. Deeds funding a trust here are recorded with the Jefferson County clerk. The individual instruments are covered on our estate planning attorney page.
Why us?
Families Helped Across Colorado
Years Combined legal experience
Locations: Wheat ridge & Fort collins
The Best Time
To Plan is Before You Need It
Most people call us after something happens. A diagnosis, a friend's family fighting over an estate, a new grandchild. You don't have to wait for one of those. Tell us what's on your mind, and we'll tell you honestly whether you need a plan yet.
How the Estate Planning Process Works with Us
free call
Tell us about your family and assets, and we will map the options.
clear plan
We draft documents that match your actual situation, not a generic online template.
Signed & Funded
We make sure the plan is executed properly and actually holds your assets.
The August & Suchowski Difference
FAQs
A comprehensive plan coordinates every asset and every document, rather than producing a will in isolation. It accounts for business interests, property in other states, retirement accounts, and beneficiary designations together. Complexity in the holdings, not the dollar figure, is what determines the approach.
It depends on the governing documents and any buy-sell agreement already in place. Those terms often control what can happen to an interest, regardless of what a will says. We review them before drafting, because a plan that conflicts with them creates litigation rather than preventing it.
Remarriage is one of the most common reasons an existing plan stops matching a family's intentions. Beneficiary designations and older trust terms frequently still name a former spouse. Reviewing every account alongside the documents is the only reliable way to catch that.
Generally yes. Accounts naming a beneficiary pass directly to that person and the will does not control them. That single mechanism causes more unintended outcomes than any drafting error. Reviewing every form against the plan is a standard part of our process.
Meaningful changes matter more than elapsed time. A sale, a purchase in another state, a marriage, a divorce, or a beneficiary's changed circumstances each warrant a review. Plans treated as one-time transactions are the ones that fail when they're finally needed.
An Old Plan Can Work Against Your Family
Estate Planning Attorney in Wheat Ridge, Colorado
We're on Kipling Street just north of West 41st Avenue, a few minutes from the Kipling exit off I-70. Free parking is available on-site, and the suite is on the second floor with elevator access from the lobby. We also keep a second office in Fort Collins for clients in Northern Colorado.