Kristi Franklin Hyatt
Trusts & Estate Planning
Kristi Hyatt is board certified in Estate Planning and Probate Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and heads the trusts & estates practice at DGC Law. Her practice includes estate planning, family wealth transfers, asset protection, incapacity planning, and probate and estate administration.
She has extensive experience in probate and other court proceedings throughout west Texas. Over the course of her career, Kristi has represented a variety of clients, including banks, entrepreneurs, executives, mineral interest owners, professionals, farmers, and ranchers.
An important element of Kristi's practice involves counseling clients in a variety of highly significant and often sensitive issues, including wills and trusts, transfer tax reduction, probate, trust administration, and guardianship avoidance. Her approach to all such matters is highly individualized. To this end, Kristi has provided personalized assistance to clients in situations that required, for example, the design of an estate plan that eliminated transfer taxes and protected inheritances for several generations; the settlement of the probate of a multi-million dollar estate; and the creation of a plan for a special needs child in a blended family.
Prior to joining DGC Law, Kristi was a partner at another leading law firm in Midland where she gained substantial litigation experience in addition to trusts and estates experience. Her varied background has proven to be very valuable in the court proceedings she frequently handles and in those instances in which she is working in tandem with the firm's trial lawyers in complex probate and trust-related litigation. Kristi's clients are also able to tap into the depth of the firm's corporate practice because Kristi's estate planning practice often involves advising clients about the use of business entities to accomplish estate planning goals.
Kristi is a frequent and well-known speaker in her field. She has spoken on topics that include estate planning for young families; will contests; probate avoidance techniques; charitable split-interest trusts; generation-skipping transfer taxes; and executor compensation.
Bar Admissions:
Texas, 1989
U.S. District Court Northern District of Texas
U.S. District Court Western District of Texas
U.S. District Court Southern District of Texas
United States Supreme Court
Education:
Baylor University
Waco, Texas, 1989
J.D.
Howard Payne University
Brownwood, Texas, 1986
B.A. - Douglas MacArthur Academy of Freedom Honors Program
Free Enterprise Curriculum
Professional Associations and Memberships:
State Bar of Texas Member
Midland County Bar Association Member
Midland Business and Estate Council, Secretary
College of the State Bar of Texas Member
Texas Bar Foundation Fellow
