The most expensive estate-planning mistake in Texas isn’t made by the wealthy — it’s made by the people who assume planning is only for the wealthy, and so never make a plan at all.
“I’m not rich enough to need an estate plan.” It is one of the most common things a Texas attorney hears — and one of the most costly. The belief sounds responsible. It is also backwards, because an estate plan was never really about the size of your estate.
An estate plan is not a document for rich people. It is a set of instructions for the people who depend on you — instructions that take effect at exactly the moment you can no longer give them yourself. The question it answers is not “who gets my money.” It is “who steps in, and what happens to the people I am responsible for.”
Reframed that way, the net-worth test falls apart. A parent of two young children with a modest house and a retirement account has far more riding on these questions than a wealthy retiree with no dependents and no minor children. “Rich enough” was always the wrong measure.
What it protects
What a plan actually decides.
Set money aside for a moment and look at what an estate plan actually governs. If you are in the hospital and cannot speak, who makes your medical decisions, and who is authorized to keep your household running — pay the mortgage, manage the accounts — while you recover? If you have minor children, who raises them if something happens to you and the other parent? When you are gone, who receives what you have built, and how much of it is consumed by court costs and delay before it reaches them?
None of those questions turns on your net worth. Every one of them has an answer whether or not you choose it. The only question is whether you supply the answer or someone else does.
The default plan
What Texas decides if you don’t.
If you do not put these decisions in writing, Texas has already written them for you — and the defaults rarely match what a family would have chosen.
Die without a will, and the Texas intestacy statute, not you, determines who inherits and in what shares. For families with children from a prior marriage, the result can divide a home among a surviving spouse and stepchildren in ways almost no one intends. Name no guardian for your minor children, and a judge — not you — selects who raises them, choosing among whoever steps forward. Sign no durable power of attorney, and if you are incapacitated, your family may have to open a court guardianship proceeding simply to manage your own affairs: a public, ongoing, attorney-involved process that a single signed document would have avoided.
Doing nothing is not the absence of a plan. It is choosing the state’s plan by default.
Who is exposed
Who actually has the most at stake.
The families most exposed by the “not rich enough” myth are rarely the wealthy. The wealthy tend to have advisors, and they tend to assume they need a plan. It is the working family — one house, a retirement account or two, young children — that most often has nothing in place, precisely because they were told estate planning is for someone richer.
That family has the most riding on the guardianship decision, on the power of attorney, and on the beneficiary designations that quietly control where a 401(k) actually goes. A plan at that level is neither elaborate nor expensive. But its absence is the gap that does the most damage.
The real meaning
What “not rich enough” really means.
Nine times out of ten, “I’m not rich enough to need a plan” is not a statement about money at all. It means no one has shown me what a plan actually protects. Once a family sees that the plan protects their children, their medical wishes, and their family’s time and privacy — at any net worth — the objection tends to disappear.
If you have been putting this off because you assumed estate planning was for someone wealthier, that assumption is, in effect, the plan you currently have. It is worth replacing with a real one.
What to do
Where to start.
The foundation most Texas families need is modest: a properly drafted will with a self-proving affidavit, durable and medical powers of attorney, an advance directive, a named guardian for any minor children, and current beneficiary designations on every retirement account and life insurance policy. No large estate — and no large fee — is required to put it in place. What is required is the decision to stop deferring it.
Schedule a consultation to create a plan that protects your family, your wishes, and the people who depend on you.
Lozano Legal Advisors PLLC is a Dallas–Fort Worth firm led by Norris Lozano, a licensed Texas attorney with 30+ years in practice, admitted to the State Bar of Texas, the United States Tax Court, and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. He spent eighteen years as a Downtown Dallas law partner representing the largest financial institutions in Texas, and served as Chief Executive Officer and General Counsel of the Portland Family of Funds, which secured $180 million in New Markets Tax Credits from the U.S. Treasury and closed transactions exceeding $1.1 billion. His practice covers estate planning, elder law and Medicaid planning, real estate, business formation, corporate and partnership work, tax resolution, and federal tax credit finance.
Our firm combines modern technology, efficient systems, and attorney oversight to provide responsive legal services while maintaining personal attention to every client matter.