Serving Thousand Oaks, Ventura County, and families throughout California
Protecting the people you love, through disability, decline, and after you’re gone. Thoughtful, relationship-based planning from an attorney who has lived what it means to be unprepared.
Schedule a Legacy Planning Session
Not ready for a full session? Start with a free 15-minute Discovery Call
About William Pannier
People come to me when they’re ready to protect who and what they value most, whether that means putting an estate plan in place, planning ahead for a family member with a disability, or helping navigate the challenges of aging and decline. My aim is to make sure families aren’t caught unprepared, and the people you love can stay out of court and out of conflict.
A Career Built on Service
My legal career is rooted in my experience as an Air Force JAG officer. On active duty, I tried court-martials, handled government contracts, and did basic estate planning for military members and retirees. After six years as a JAG, I spent a decade at a large law firm in downtown Los Angeles, and in 2017, I launched my own practice.
My Why
I realized the importance of estate planning – especially incapacity planning – when my brother-in-law suffered a stroke and spent weeks in a coma. That was a wake-up call. I’m an attorney. I was a JAG. I have a wife and children, and if something happened to me, I was not prepared. I remember thinking: I know better, and I have no excuse. That experience brought me back to estate planning, so I could help other families avoid being caught off guard the way we were.
Elder law became real when I started helping elderly people close to me through disability and decline. How do we protect their quality of life? How do we plan for their long-term needs, and not just what happens when someone passes?
To me, what could be more important than helping people prepare for things we know are going to happen … we just don’t know when? That’s why I believe elder law and estate planning is the most meaningful work I can do as a lawyer.
On a Personal Note
I’m a husband, dad, son, brother, son-in-law, etc., so I understand family dynamics, and I understand that planning isn’t necessarily something you do for yourself. You do it for the people you love, because they’re the ones who will be dealing with things when you no longer can.
How I Can Help Your Family
Every family’s situation is different, but the planning generally falls into three areas.
Elder Law
Elder law is about making sure your wishes are honored while you’re well, when you get sick, and after you’re gone. The focus is on your lifetime needs first, not just what happens after death. This is planning for the questions that become urgent when a parent or spouse needs long-term care: How do we pay for it? Who makes decisions if they can’t? How do we protect a spouse’s financial security while qualifying for benefits?
- Powers of attorney and health care directives tailored for incapacity, not just estate distribution
- Coordinating care decisions with the legal tools to back them up
- Long-term care and Medi-Cal planning
- Guidance through disability and cognitive decline for aging parents and spouses
If you’re currently facing a parent’s or spouse’s decline, this work often can’t wait for a routine estate planning appointment.
Special Needs Trusts
If you have a child, sibling, or other loved one with a disability, standard estate planning can actually work against them: an inheritance received outright can disqualify someone from Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Medi-Cal, or other essential government benefits. A properly drafted special needs trust lets you provide for that person’s quality of life without putting their benefits at risk.
- First-party and third-party special needs trusts, tailored to your family’s situation
- Coordinating the trust with the rest of your estate plan so nothing falls through the cracks
- Guidance on trustee selection
- Planning that accounts for your loved one’s needs over their entire lifetime, not just at your death
Special needs planning is not one-size-fits-all, and it’s not something to hand off to a generic online form. It deserves an attorney who will take the time to understand your family’s specific circumstances.
Estate Planning: Wills, Trusts & Powers of Attorney
A complete estate plan is what keeps your family out of court and out of conflict if something happens to you. It’s more than a stack of documents. It’s a thought-out plan built specifically for your family, which must be properly implemented, with your assets kept correctly titled, and kept current as your life changes.
- Revocable living trusts, designed to avoid probate and keep your affairs private
- Comprehensive planning for protection of minor children
- Financial and health care powers of attorney, so the right people can act for you immediately if needed
- Asset protection planning for what your heirs inherit, shielding it from creditors, lawsuits, and divorce
- Trust funding instructions, so your plan will work when your family needs it
Without a plan, or with an outdated or improperly funded one, your family risks ending up in probate court (which can be time-consuming and expensive), in conflict, or both.
Our Approach
Anyone can generate estate planning documents today: online forms, AI tools, discount legal services. What none of them can do is get to know you, understand your situation, and help you think through the decisions that actually matter to your family. That takes a person, not a program. That’s the difference between paperwork and a plan.
Education
Most people don’t have an estate plan simply because they don’t fully understand what happens if they don’t have one. My job starts with helping you understand what’s really at stake, and what you can do about it.
Counseling
I’m an attorney and counselor-at-law, and I take that second part seriously. I don’t just produce documents. I help clients think things through and make the decisions that are right for their family, then build a plan around those decisions.
Getting You Financially Organized
I help families get financially organized. Imagine having to step in during a loved one’s incapacity, or while a family is grieving their loss, and having to run everything for someone else: the accounts, the property, the decisions. A good plan makes that manageable. Having no plan, a bad plan, or an outdated plan makes it a crisis.
What Sets This Firm Apart
Flat-Fee Pricing
Our work, from foundational estate plans to elder law matters, is typically billed on a flat fee basis. No surprises, no hourly clock running every time you call with a question. I’d rather you call and ask than avoid your attorney because you’re worried about running up a bill.
The Golden Rule
I treat clients the way I’d want to be treated if I were sitting where you are. Because I view estate planning as a high touch service, I can’t sustain a high-volume practice seeing as many people as possible. The priority is to serve those who are the right fit and build something real with them.
Building Relationships
The better I get to know you and understand your situation over time, the more value I can deliver. That’s how a relationship works. And I see estate planning as the beginning of a relationship.
What It’s Like to Work Together
Planning with our firm generally moves through the following stages.
1. Legacy Planning Session
We start by getting to know you and your family: your priorities, your concerns, and what you most want to avoid (loss of control over who gets what and when, probate cost/delay, family conflict, an inheritance that isn’t protected, the wrong person in charge). This conversation shapes everything that follows.
2. Design Meeting
We design a plan tailored to your priorities and walk through the decisions together: guardians for minor children, trustees, health care agents, and how you want your assets protected and distributed. You’ll review a summary of everything you’ve decided before anything is finalized, so things aren’t missed.
3. Signing & Funding
We sign your documents together – in person or virtually – and I make sure everything is properly executed. I’ll provide clear funding instructions as part of your signing package, so you know how to fund accounts and property into the trust.
Not ready to commit to a full Legacy Planning Session yet? A 15-minute Discovery Call is a good first step. See the link below.
Ready to Get Started?
What could be more important than preparing for the things we know are going to happen, even though we don’t know when? If you’re ready to protect the people you love, I’d be glad to talk it through with you.
Pannier Law, P.C. | Thousand Oaks, California