Estate Planning Attorney in Kennesaw, Georgia

Cobb County now takes most probate filings through an online e-filing system. You do not have to show up at the courthouse in Marietta, about 20 minutes from Kennesaw. Your attorney can file that way without you making the drive. A funded trust skips this filing step entirely for the assets it holds.

A TRS pension or an ORP account follows its own beneficiary form, not your will. ORP money sits with an outside company, like Fidelity, TIAA, or VALIC. Each one keeps its own separate form on file. Atlanta Estate Planning tracks down and checks every one of those forms as part of your plan. A form you signed your first year on the job does not get to keep deciding where the money goes.

The Complete Family Trust Package at Atlanta Estate Planning starts at a flat $3,500. That is a flat fee, not an hourly rate. It covers your trust, your will, your power of attorney, and your healthcare directive. Many local firms will not give you a price. Not until after a paid consultation.

Georgia will not let your family just decide informally who raises your kids if you and your spouse are both gone. A Cobb County judge holds a hearing and names a guardian instead. That hearing can take months to schedule and resolve. Two relatives can each ask for the job at the same hearing, with no guarantee either one matches what you would have picked. Put your own choice in writing now, and there is nothing left for a judge to guess at.

A Medicaid Asset Protection Trust only works if you sign it years before nursing home care starts. Signing it after care already began is too late. Georgia will not pay for that care through Medicaid until your parent meets strict asset limits. If your parent already lives on your Kennesaw property, ask about the timing on your free call. The clock starts the day the trust gets signed, not the day care begins.

No, Georgia does not have its own estate tax. A Kennesaw family only has to plan around the federal estate tax. That exemption is $15,000,000 per person in 2026. Almost no Cobb County family ever crosses that number. The real cost most Kennesaw families face is not a tax bill. It is the time and money a home loses sitting in probate court.

A simple estate is exactly where Kennesaw families skip planning, then regret it later. Even one house and one bank account still goes through Cobb County Probate Court without a trust. A revocable living trust costs a flat $3,500. That price stays the same, simple estate or not. One free call can tell you if a trust makes sense for you. Want to see what a self-filed trust involves first? Our guide on setting up a trust in Georgia walks through the paperwork most people miss.

Georgia intestacy law decides who gets your house and bank accounts if you never sign a will. It does not ask what you actually wanted. A spouse usually splits the estate with children, instead of inheriting everything. That rule comes from O.C.G.A. § 53-2-1. The state also picks who raises your minor children if you never named a guardian. A will or trust puts every one of those choices back in your hands.

Buying a new home, starting a job at Kennesaw State, or switching between TRS and ORP are all good reasons to open your plan again. A trust only protects property titled in its name. A home you bought last year might not be inside it yet. Review your plan every few years on its own. Review it again right after any change like this.

A will becomes public once it is filed with Cobb County Probate Court. Anyone can walk in and read it. That includes the size of the estate and who inherits what. A trust never gets filed with any court. Its terms stay private. For a Kennesaw family, that privacy is a real reason to fund a trust, not just a way to skip probate.