Douglas E. Clarke has an extensive estate planning practice. He counsels clients on all aspects of estate planning, such as generation-skipping trusts, family limited partnerships, charitable gifting, life insurance trusts, asset protection trusts, and various other techniques to minimize taxes, avoid family conflict and achieve financial goals. He also advises on all areas of federal estate and state inheritance taxation. Doug has an active practice in 501(c)(3) entities. Doug’s practice includes all areas of probate administration, including estate tax disputes, problems and disputes between beneficiaries, executors and trustees. Doug facilities in the reformation of trusts. Doug has much experience using defective grantor trusts for cost-effective transfer of assets between generations.
Doug began practicing in the tax section of Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (“AK”) in 1973, where he specialized in estate tax and probate and trust law. He was at AK for forty-two (42) years. Doug was Board Certified in estate planning and probate law in Texas for 35 years from 1979 until 2014. He also practiced with MacIntyre, McCulloch 7 Stanfield until early 2022.
In practicing estate planning, Doug attempts to structure simple solutions for complex family situations, addressing issues as to hard-to-value assets, assets to be preserved by the family and assets to avoid estate taxation. He has had success negotiating with the IRS in the audit of Federal estate tax returns.
Doug listens to clients to determine issues and what is important to them, as well as what problems and concerns they have or may be faced with. Doug wants to develop long-term relationships with his clients to provide legal services to address the issues that his clients may face.
