Wendy L. Allard

Wendy Allard’s practice focuses on estate planning, probate, and business transactions. Her accessible and warm-hearted approach puts clients at ease making the legal process less daunting and intimidating.  Wendy has extensive experience managing a wide variety of estates from the less complicated to the highly sophisticated. Wendy uses her tax background to leverage clients’ business strategies with focused estate planning to minimize their federal and state taxes while also facilitating their personal and family goals.

Estate Planning – Helping Craft a Customized, Easy-to-Understand Plan

Understanding that each person has a unique set of values, goals, and ideas is important when counseling clients in regard to their estate plan. Wendy’s approach to estate planning is to prepare a customized estate plan based upon each client’s situation, goals, and objectives, with a focus on ease of estate administration and plan understanding.

Part of her experience includes sophisticated estate planning for wealth preservation and efficient asset distribution, much of which is tax driven. By listening to client objectives and understanding the nature of their assets and desires, Wendy develops strategies for clients concerning how to best protect assets, minimize taxes, accomplish desired transfers, and minimize disputes after death. She guides clients through determining whether a trust may be desirable, and if so, the terms and conditions that should be established to best accomplish a client’s objectives.

Protecting Assets During Life

Wendy also helps clients protect their interests and assets through the preparation of living wills and durable powers of attorney for healthcare and personal needs. She also assists clients who have loved ones with special needs through the creation of special needs trusts.

Probate and Estate Administration – Helping Clients through the Final Distribution of a Loved One’s Assets, and Preserving Family Harmony

Wendy’s probate practice is focused on helping estate administrators comply with their fiduciary duties. She assists administrators with making required filings, paying estate creditors, and distributing assets in accordance with a will, trust, or intestate laws.

Many estate plans and trusts are created with good intentions, but future circumstances sometimes arise that require a close look as to whether those documents are still achieving the goals that they were created to achieve.  In these situations, Wendy can often assist heirs and beneficiaries reach creative and mutually agreeable solutions.

Background and Personal

Prior to entering private practice, Wendy served a clerkship with the Honorable H. Joseph Coleman of the Washington State Court of Appeals, Div. I.

Outside of her practice, Wendy enjoys baking, making birthday cakes for children in homeless shelters, knitting, soap making, and creating her own herbal medicines and skin care products.  She has three children who keep her on her toes.