Colleyville Trust Attorneys for Family Limited Partnership Services
What You'll Learn
- Peabody Law Firm and our trust attorneys help Colleyville families hold real estate, business interests, and investment accounts inside a family limited partnership.
- An FLP lets a parent keep the decision-making authority while ownership shifts to the next generation over time.
- Our family limited partnership services for Colleyville families cover the formation documents, the funding, the appraisal coordination, and the yearly upkeep that keeps the structure defensible.
- Our office is a short drive from Colleyville, at 1205 S. White Chapel Blvd., Suite 100 in Southlake, TX. Call 817-775-9190 for a free consultation.
What Is a Family Limited Partnership?
A family limited partnership is a Texas partnership that your family owns and that holds your assets. One or more general partners run it. Everyone else holds limited partnership interests, which carry a share of the economic value but no authority over what the partnership buys, sells, or distributes.
That split is the whole point. A parent can serve as general partner, keep managing the rental portfolio or the family company exactly as before, and still transfer limited interests to children each year. Ownership moves. Control does not.
Who an FLP Actually Fits
Not every family in Colleyville needs one, and our trust attorneys will say so during the consultation rather than after you have paid for documents. FLPs earn their cost when there is a real pool of assets to manage together, usually appreciating real estate, a closely held business, mineral interests, or an investment account large enough that gifting shares of it makes sense.
Texas imposes no state estate tax or inheritance tax, and the federal estate and gift tax exemption sits at $15 million per person and $30 million per married couple as of January 1, 2026. Most households will never reach that number. What draws them to an FLP is usually something else. They want the rental properties held in one place, the next generation learning how the assets work before they inherit them, and a structure that makes an outside claim against one child harder to reach the family’s holdings.
Control Stays Where You Put It
Parents hesitate to give assets away for a reason. Handing a 25-year-old a deed to a commercial building rarely ends the way anyone hoped. The FLP answers that objection directly. As general partner, you decide when distributions happen and whether a property gets sold. A limited partner cannot force either.
Transfer restrictions in the agreement do the rest of the work. A limited interest generally cannot be sold to an outsider, and in a divorce or a creditor dispute, the other side is looking at a restricted, non-controlling interest in a family partnership rather than at the underlying property.
The Part Most People Get Wrong
An FLP is only as strong as the way you run it. The partnership needs its own bank account. Assets have to actually be retitled into it. Personal expenses cannot be paid out of it as though it were a checking account. There should be a real business reason for the entity beyond tax positioning. The IRS challenges partnerships that ignore those lines, and courts have pulled assets back into estates where the parent kept using partnership property as personal property. Our trust attorneys serving families in Colleyville build the maintenance schedule into the plan from the start, because the documents are the easy half.
What Our Family Limited Partnership Services Include
Our Colleyville trust attorneys handle the full setup and what comes after:
- Drafting the limited partnership agreement, including distribution terms, transfer restrictions, and buy-sell provisions
- Filing the certificate of formation with the Texas Secretary of State and organizing the general partner entity
- Funding the partnership by retitling real estate, accounts, and business interests into it
- Coordinating with a qualified appraiser when interests are valued for gifting
- Preparing the annual gifting documents and assignments as interests move to children or trusts
- Coordinating the FLP with your wills, revocable trusts, and any specialty trusts already in place
- Estate and income tax forecasting so the plan holds up across generations
- Trustee services when the partnership interests are held in trust and you need a third party in that seat
How the Process Runs
- Consultation. A free, no-obligation meeting about your assets, your family, and whether an FLP is the right tool.
- Follow-Up Meeting. We walk through the draft agreement, the general partner structure, and the funding list.
- Final Signing. Plain-language review of every document, then execution and the work of retitling assets.
Call 817-775-9190 or reach out online to talk with one of our Colleyville trust attorneys about whether an FLP fits your situation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Practically speaking, yes. The partnership agreement is where the value lives, and the filing itself is the smallest part of the job. Transfer restrictions, distribution terms, valuation language, and the funding steps all have to work together, and a generic template usually fails on the details that matter years later.
Yes. That is the reason most families choose this structure. Serving as general partner keeps management decisions with you while limited interests move to your children over time.
It may reduce the taxable value of what you transfer, because a limited interest with no control and no ready market is generally worth less than a proportional share of the underlying assets. Discounts have to be supported by a qualified appraisal and by a partnership that is genuinely operated as one. We will not promise a specific tax result, and any firm that does should give you pause.
A trust holds assets for beneficiaries under terms you write, and a trustee administers it. A partnership is an operating entity that your family owns and manages together. Many families use both, with the FLP holding the assets and a revocable or irrevocable trust holding the partnership interests.
Your homestead usually stays out. Moving a primary residence into a partnership can complicate the Texas homestead exemption and the capital gains exclusion on a later sale. Rental property, land, and commercial buildings are the more common candidates.
Formation moves quickly. Funding is what sets the timeline, since deeds have to be prepared and recorded, accounts retitled, and business interests assigned. Appraisals add time when gifting starts right away. We will give you a realistic schedule at the consultation.
Talk to a Colleyville Trust Attorney
Peabody Law Firm, PLLC limits its practice to estate planning, probate, and business matters, and our attorneys work in these areas daily. If you own property, a business, or investments that you would like to keep in the family and out of court, a family limited partnership is worth a conversation.
Call 817-775-9190 or request a consultation online to speak with our trust attorneys serving Colleyville about family limited partnership services.