Estate Planning for Lexington Families Who Have Something to Protect
Lexington homes have appreciated for decades. That is good news until it collides with the Massachusetts estate tax, and most plans written years ago were never built for the numbers involved today.
Lexington Estates Are Probated in Woburn — Minutes From Our Office
If a Lexington estate has to go through probate, it is not heard in Lexington. It is heard at the Middlesex Probate and Family Court, 10-U Commerce Way, Woburn — the same city as our office, which sits at TradeCenter 128 just off I-95. Lexington is one of the eighteen communities that court covers.
What probate costs is the part that surprises people, because it is paid out of the estate rather than billed to anyone. There are court fees, there is often a bond, real estate and personal property may need formal appraisal, and there is the legal work of administering the whole thing. On an estate whose main asset is an appreciated Lexington home, none of that is trivial, and every dollar of it comes out of what the family receives.
None of it is compulsory. Assets held in a properly funded trust are not administered by the court at all, which removes the fees, the bond and the appraisal requirement along with the delay. See how Massachusetts probate works.
Lexington Home Values and the $2 Million Threshold
Massachusetts applies an estate tax filing threshold of $2,000,000. In a town where a house bought decades ago may now be worth several times what was paid for it, that line is crossed by families who have never thought of themselves as wealthy.
The threshold is not only about cash. It takes in the house at full market value, every retirement account, and any life insurance policy you own — and for a household that has held property here through decades of appreciation, the house alone often does most of the work.
Timing is the whole game. If everything passes outright to the surviving spouse, the first spouse’s $2 million exemption simply disappears, and the entire combined estate is measured at the second death instead.
Structured properly, a married couple keeps both exemptions and shelters up to $4 million. This is planning that has to exist before the first death — there is no retrospective fix.
Run your own numbers with our Massachusetts Estate Tax Calculator.
What Lexington Families Come to Us For
Lexington households usually arrive with more moving parts than a simple will can carry — a long-held home with substantial appreciation, retirement accounts with their own beneficiary rules, and often equity compensation or a second property.
Protecting what has been built
- Revocable and irrevocable trusts drafted for how your assets are actually titled
- Estate tax planning that uses both spouses’ exemptions
- Trust funding — the step most plans fail at, and the reason plans stop working
- Protecting an inheritance if a child later divorces
- Real estate transfers, including second homes and rental property
Planning for what comes later
- Long-term care planning before it is needed rather than during a crisis
- MassHealth eligibility and the five-year lookback
- Durable powers of attorney and health care proxies that hold up under pressure
- Conservatorship when capacity is already in question
- Special needs planning that preserves benefits
Asset protection and wealth preservation • What long-term care actually costs in Massachusetts
How We Work With Lexington Families
Free Consult Call
A call with Nicole Ott, our Lead Intake Coordinator, to understand your situation and whether we are the right fit.
Strategic Planning Session
A working meeting with an attorney where the plan is designed around your family and your assets.
We Build Your Plan
We draft the documents and, critically, we fund the trust. A trust that is not funded does not work.
Protected for Life
Your plan is reviewed and updated as your life, your assets and the law change.
Lexington Residents Ask Us…
Do we have to come to Woburn?
Our office is at TradeCenter 128 in Woburn, straight up Route 128 from Lexington, with parking at the door. Most Lexington clients find that easier than driving into Boston or Cambridge. We also meet by video when that suits you better.
Where would a Lexington estate actually be probated?
At the Middlesex Probate and Family Court, 10-U Commerce Way in Woburn, which serves Lexington and seventeen other Middlesex communities. Assets in a properly funded trust bypass that process entirely.
Our house alone is worth well over $1 million. Do we have an estate tax problem?
Quite possibly. Massachusetts applies a $2,000,000 filing threshold and counts your home at full market value alongside retirement accounts and life insurance you own. Our estate tax calculator will give you a straight answer in a couple of minutes.
We had a trust drawn up years ago. Does it still work?
It depends on two things: whether it was ever funded, and whether it was written for the current estate tax rules. Massachusetts changed those rules in 2023. An unfunded trust does nothing at all, and it is the single most common problem we find in plans brought to us for review.
Do you handle the estate afterwards, or only the planning?
Both. We draft and fund the plan, and we are the firm your family calls when it has to be administered. The people who built the plan are the ones who know why each piece is there.
Your Lexington Estate Planning Attorney Is Ready
Start with a free consult call. No cost, no obligation — a straight conversation about what you have and what it would take to protect it.