Estate planning for Grosse Pointe families.

Five communities, one planning approach

Grosse Pointe is not one city. It is five distinct municipalities — Grosse Pointe Park, the City of Grosse Pointe, Grosse Pointe Farms, Grosse Pointe Shores, and Grosse Pointe Woods — nestled along the western shore of Lake St. Clair in Wayne County. Together, the five Pointes are home to roughly 46,000 residents across a corridor of tree-lined streets, historic architecture, and lakefront estates that represent some of the most concentrated family wealth in metropolitan Detroit.

Each community has its own character. Grosse Pointe Shores features manicured estates and grand mansions lining Lake Shore Drive, including the historic Edsel and Eleanor Ford House. Grosse Pointe Farms and the City of Grosse Pointe combine walkable village centers with deep-lot colonials and Tudors from the 1920s and 1930s. Grosse Pointe Park, bordering Detroit along Alter Road, has seen a wave of younger families restoring its stately Craftsman and brick-colonial housing stock. Grosse Pointe Woods, the largest of the five by population, is the community most families encounter first — solid mid-century homes, strong public schools, and a neighborhood-oriented feel.

We serve clients in all five communities. The estate planning needs across the Pointes share a common thread: the assets are real, the families have history, and the consequences of a poorly-drafted plan are measured in generations, not just dollars.

Wayne County Probate Court — not Oakland County

This is the single most important jurisdictional fact for Grosse Pointe families to understand: all five Grosse Pointe communities sit in Wayne County, not Oakland County. That means any probate proceeding — whether it is the administration of a decedent's estate, a trust dispute, a guardianship, or a conservatorship — goes through the Wayne County Probate Court, located on the 13th floor of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center at 2 Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit.

This matters because Wayne County Probate Court operates differently from the Oakland County court in Pontiac. The filing procedures, local administrative orders, fee schedules, and courtroom practices are distinct. A plan drafted by an attorney who only works in Oakland County may not account for these differences. We practice in both courts regularly and draft documents with the specific requirements of each jurisdiction in mind.

For Grosse Pointe families, the practical implications include:

• Filing location. Petitions for probate of a Grosse Pointe resident's estate are filed at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in Detroit — not at the Oakland County courthouse in Pontiac.
• Local administrative orders. Wayne County Probate Court has its own set of local rules governing everything from inventory deadlines to accounting formats to notice requirements. These differ from Oakland County's rules.
• Court scheduling and timelines. Processing times, hearing schedules, and judge assignments in Wayne County follow their own patterns. Experience in one county does not automatically translate to the other.
• Avoiding probate entirely. The best plan for most Grosse Pointe families is one that keeps the estate out of Wayne County Probate Court altogether — through properly-funded revocable living trusts, beneficiary designations, and Lady Bird deeds on real property.

Generational wealth and multi-generational planning

The Grosse Pointes are one of a handful of communities in Michigan where generational wealth is not an abstraction — it is a fact of daily life. Families in the Farms and Shores have been passing down homes, businesses, and investment portfolios for three and four generations. That history creates estate planning questions that simply do not arise in newer communities.

When wealth has already survived one or two generational transfers, the planning conversation shifts. It is no longer just about avoiding probate or saving on estate taxes. It is about preserving a family's relationship with its own assets across time:

• Trusts that were drafted twenty or thirty years ago under different tax laws and different family circumstances, and that may need to be decanted, amended, or replaced
• Irrevocable trusts created by parents or grandparents that restrict how current beneficiaries can use or manage trust assets
• Concentrated positions in family businesses, real estate, or investment accounts that have appreciated substantially and carry enormous built-in capital gains
• Competing interests among family members in different branches, different generations, and different financial situations
• Charitable commitments and family foundations that need to be integrated with the overall estate structure

We work with Grosse Pointe families on plans that account for where the family has been, not just where it is today. That often means coordinating with the family's existing advisors — CPAs, financial planners, insurance professionals — to evaluate what is already in place before making changes.

Historic properties and lakefront estates

Grosse Pointe's residential architecture is part of what makes the community distinctive — and part of what makes estate planning here more complex than in a typical suburb. Many homes in the Pointes were built in the 1910s through the 1940s, designed by prominent architects, and maintained by families across multiple generations. Lake Shore Drive properties in Grosse Pointe Shores and Grosse Pointe Farms feature waterfront estates on Lake St. Clair with assessed values well into seven figures.

These properties create specific planning considerations:

• Stepped-up basis. For a family home that was purchased decades ago for a fraction of its current value, the difference between inheriting the property (with a step-up in basis at death) and receiving it as a lifetime gift (with carryover basis) can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital gains tax exposure.
• Trust ownership and title. Transferring a historic home into a revocable living trust avoids probate while preserving the step-up in basis — but the deed must be drafted correctly, the title insurance must be updated, and the homeowner's insurance must reflect the trust as the named insured.
• Multi-generational use. Some Grosse Pointe families want the family home to remain available to future generations without forcing a sale. This requires careful trust drafting — addressing maintenance costs, property taxes, insurance, decision-making authority, and what happens when one beneficiary wants to sell and another does not.
• Lady Bird deeds. For Grosse Pointe homeowners who prefer a simpler alternative to trust-based property transfer, a Lady Bird deed can transfer the home at death while preserving the owner's full control during life — and maintaining the property tax uncapping protection under Michigan law.

Family business succession in established communities

The Grosse Pointes are home to business owners whose companies have operated in metropolitan Detroit for decades — professional practices, commercial real estate portfolios, manufacturing operations, multi-location retail businesses, and service companies that have outlived their founders. When these businesses are also the family's primary asset, the estate plan and the succession plan are inseparable.

We work with business-owning families on the questions that matter most:

• Whether the business should pass to children who are active in it, be sold, or some combination of both — and how to treat children who are not in the business fairly without dismantling it
• Buy-sell agreements that actually work — funded with life insurance, consistent with the operating agreement, and coordinated with the trust and the will
• Voting versus economic interests in LLCs and closely-held corporations, particularly when ownership is being split among family members with different roles
• Key employee retention and non-family management transitions

The goal is a plan that lets the business survive the founder — and lets the family survive the transition.

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Tax-aware wealth transfer for substantial estates

The federal estate tax exemption is historically high right now but is scheduled to be reduced. For Grosse Pointe families with substantial net worth — particularly those with appreciated Lake St. Clair real estate, concentrated business interests, and multi-generational trust assets — there are real planning opportunities that may not be available indefinitely.

We work with our clients' CPAs and financial advisors to evaluate tools including:

• Lifetime gifting strategies and use of the federal exemption before any scheduled reduction
• Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLATs) and other irrevocable structures that remove assets from the taxable estate while preserving family access
• Generation-skipping trust planning for families that want to benefit grandchildren or later generations without double taxation
• Coordination of beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance with the overall trust structure
• Step-up in basis planning for jointly-held and trust-held real estate — particularly important for long-held Grosse Pointe properties

We are not your tax advisor and we are not your investment advisor. We are the lawyer who makes the documents do what the team has decided they should do.

Our office and how we work with Grosse Pointe clients

Our office is in Southfield, at 24361 Greenfield Road, Suite 310 — approximately 25 minutes from the Grosse Pointes via I-696 East and I-94. We also offer virtual consultations for clients who prefer to meet by video.

Most estate planning engagements begin one of two ways: a complimentary 20-minute screening call to discuss your situation and determine whether we can help, or a $500 in-depth consultation — a working session where we review existing documents, discuss realistic options, and identify concrete next steps. The consultation fee is credited toward your engagement if you retain us.

For more about our estate planning approach, see our full estate planning practice page.

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