Estate Planning and Administration After the 2026 Threshold Increases: What Changes, What Doesn’t, and What Clients Are Getting Wrong

Don D. Ford III, Managing Partner | Ford + Bergner LLP

Don D. Ford III is the Managing Partner of Ford + Bergner LLP, a probate, guardianship, and estate litigation firm with offices in Houston, Dallas, and Austin, and has devoted more than twenty-five years of practice to the administration of decedents’ estates. Board Certified in Estate Planning and Probate by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, he works daily with the full menu of post-death remedies — from formal administration to the streamlined small estate and summary procedures at the center of this program — making him ideally suited to guide practitioners in choosing the remedy that holds up after the 2026 threshold increases.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Ford earned his J.D. from Baylor University School of Law, where he concentrated in estate planning and business planning, and his B.B.A. in Accounting from Baylor University, followed by post-graduate coursework toward a Master’s in Taxation. He has been licensed in Texas since 1997, is Board Certified in Estate Planning and Probate by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, and is a certified mediator through Pepperdine University’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Ford has been selected to the Texas Super Lawyers list from 2024 through 2026, is a Fellow of the Houston Bar Foundation, and serves as a Commissioner on the Texas Judicial Branch Certification Commission. He previously served as Vice Chairman of the Guardianship Certification Board — appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas — and his commentary on estate administration has appeared in outlets including Family Office Magazine and TheStreet.

• Professional Involvement

A faculty presenter for the National Business Institute since 2001, Mr. Ford has taught probate and guardianship seminars for two decades, including the program “Oddities and Challenges in Texas Probate” and courses on probate basics, trust administration, and guardianship alternatives. He is the author of “Your Complete Guide to Leaving an Inheritance for Your Children and Others” and recent analyses on the coming generational wealth transfer, and is an active member of the probate sections of the State Bar of Texas, the Houston and Dallas Bar Associations, and the American Bar Association’s Real Property, Trust & Estate Law Section.

• Experience

Mr. Ford began his career as a tax attorney at a large international accounting firm before building a practice devoted to probate administration, estate and trust litigation, guardianship, and fiduciary services across Texas’s major markets. Over twenty-five-plus years he has shepherded estates of every size through the courts — and litigated what happens when the wrong procedure is chosen — giving him a practical command of when a small estate affidavit, summary or independent administration, or full probate is the remedy that actually holds, and making him uniquely positioned to walk attendees through that decision under the new 2026 thresholds.

SESSION 1 – Planning Under the Permanent $15 Million Exemption: Rethinking Trusts, Basis, and the Documents Already Signed | 2:30pm – 3:30pm

With the federal estate and gift tax exemption now $15 million per person ($30 million per couple), indexed and no longer scheduled to sunset, the vast majority of clients will never owe a federal estate tax—and many of their existing plans were built for a world where they might. This session gives practitioners a clear framework for advising clients after the 2026 threshold increases: which legacy documents now do more harm than good, when a bypass trust or formula clause quietly disinherits a surviving spouse, and how the planning conversation shifts from tax avoidance to income tax basis, asset protection, blended-family control, and incapacity. Attorneys will leave knowing how to triage an existing plan, what to redraft, and how to explain the change to clients in plain terms.

BREAK | 3:30pm – 3:40pm

SESSION 2 – Administering the Estate After the Threshold Increases: Shortcuts, Portability, and Avoiding the Disputes That Follow | 3:40pm – 4:40pm

Higher thresholds—federal and state—mean fewer estates require a tax return and more qualify for simplified procedures, but the shortcuts carry their own traps. This session walks through post-death administration in the new environment: when a small estate affidavit, muniment of title, or summary procedure is actually available and when it exposes heirs and counsel to liability; when a portability election is still worth filing for a non-taxable estate; and how fiduciaries should handle creditor exposure, title insurability, and beneficiary expectations. Drawing on a fiduciary litigation and mediation perspective, the session closes with the administration mistakes that most often turn into will contests and breach-of-fiduciary-duty claims—and how to prevent them.