Protect What You’ve Built.
Plan for Who You Love.
Estate & Legacy Planning in Utah
Marcie Swenson & team are the last business & estate planning legal team you’ll ever need.
We don’t just draft documents. We partner with you for the rest of your life — keeping your plan current as your needs shift, and making sure your family & business has clear guidance and a trusted advocate to call when it matters most.
Estate Planning Is Really Life Planning
- • Who could speak with your doctors if you couldn’t?
- • Who would manage your finances?
- • Who would care for your children?
- • And how would your family carry out your wishes after you’re gone?
Estate planning puts those decisions in writing before your loved ones need answers.
Legacy planning also considers the relationships, values, and responsibilities behind those decisions. It can help you provide for a spouse, support a loved one with a disability, prepare the next generation, or protect a business you’ve spent years building.
At Skyda, we begin with what matters to you. Then we help bring the legal documents, financial arrangements, and family conversations together into a clear, coordinated plan.
We help Utah individuals and families create plans designed to provide clarity, protection, and peace of mind through every stage of life.
Your Legacy Plan May Include
Every family has different needs. These are some of the tools and services we may recommend as part of your plan.
Wills
A will records how you want certain property distributed, names someone to handle your estate, and allows you to nominate a guardian for minor children. It gives your loved ones important direction after your death.
Trusts
A trust can guide how assets are managed during your lifetime and distributed afterward. When properly established and funded, it may help certain assets pass outside probate and provide a thoughtful structure for an inheritance.
Incapactiy Planning
Powers of attorney and healthcare directives help you choose trusted people to handle financial and medical decisions if you cannot. We help document your wishes so loved ones have clearer guidance during illness or injury.
Special Needs Planning
Planning for a loved one with a disability means considering their care, financial support, and benefits eligibility together. We help families explore strategies designed to support long-term needs while preserving access to applicable public benefits.
Estate & Tax Planning
Complex assets call for coordinated planning. We help evaluate potential estate and transfer tax considerations, work with your financial and tax advisors, and develop strategies aligned with the people and causes you want to support.
Trust Administration
Losing someone is difficult enough without having to navigate unfamiliar responsibilities alone. We guide trustees and families through trust administration with clear explanations, compassion, and steady support as they carry out the terms of the trust.
Your circumstances may also call for elder law guidance, charitable planning, asset protection strategies, or assistance with probate, guardianships, and conservatorships. We’ll help identify where additional support is needed.
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You Don’t Need to Be Wealthy to Need an Estate Plan.
You Just Need People You Care About.
A Plan for Life, Not Just Death
Your family may need your plan long before an inheritance is involved.
An unexpected injury, serious illness, or changes in memory can raise immediate questions about who can pay bills, manage accounts, communicate with healthcare providers, or make decisions about your care.
A will generally takes effect after death. Incapacity planning addresses what happens while you’re still living.
By documenting your wishes and choosing decision-makers in advance, you can help reduce uncertainty and the potential need for court involvement.
Your plan should give the people you trust a clearer path to caring for you.
Estate Planning Made Clear
You don’t need to know which documents you need before you call.
Our first conversation is about what you own, who you love, what concerns you, and what you want your plan to accomplish.
From there, we help you:
• Understand your current situation. Review existing documents, identify potential gaps, and clarify your goals.
• Talk through important decisions. Consider decision-makers, family expectations, and sensitive questions with thoughtful guidance.
• Create your plan. Prepare documents that reflect your circumstances and explain how they work.
• Put the pieces in place. Address signing, trust funding, and coordination with relevant accounts and assets.
• Put the pieces in place. Address signing, trust funding, and coordination with relevant accounts and assets.
You bring your questions. We’ll explain your options in plain English
A Lasting Partnership for the Legacy You’re Building
Your legacy includes the people you love, the values you hold, and everything you’ve worked to build. We help you protect it with a plan that grows with you.
As life changes, we’re here to keep your plan current, guide important decisions, and give your family a trusted team to turn to when they need support most.
Parents & Growing Families
Document your wishes for your children’s care and create a plan for managing the resources you leave for them.
Blended Families
Balance responsibilities to a spouse and children from different relationships, with clear instructions that reflect your intentions.
Single People & Unmarried Couples
Choose trusted decision-makers and document how you want to provide for the people who matter to you.
Seniors & Solo Agers
Plan for changing care needs, financial management, and support—especially when a spouse or adult child may not be available to step in.
Families With Special Needs
Coordinate future care, financial support, and benefits considerations for a loved one with a disability.
People With Significant or Complex Assets
Bring real estate, investments, business interests, charitable goals, and tax considerations into a coordinated strategy.
Whatever your circumstances, your plan should reflect the life you actually have.
Estate & Legacy Planning FAQs
Estate planning isn’t only for people with significant wealth. If you own property, have children, have financial accounts, own a business, or simply want to decide who will handle important matters if you’re unable to, an estate plan can provide clear direction for you and your family.
A will provides instructions for what should happen after your death, including how certain assets should be distributed and who should serve in important roles. A trust can provide additional control over how assets are managed and distributed and, when properly created and funded, may allow certain assets to pass outside of probate. The right approach depends on your family, assets, and goals.
Not everyone needs a trust, and having a trust doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t need a will. Your estate plan should be built around your individual circumstances rather than a standard set of documents. We can help determine which planning tools make sense for you.
If you become unable to make financial, legal, or healthcare decisions for yourself, your family may not automatically have the authority to act for you. Powers of attorney and healthcare directives allow you to designate trusted people to make certain decisions on your behalf.
Certain planning strategies, including a properly established and funded trust, may allow some assets to pass outside of probate. Whether probate can or should be avoided depends on how your assets are owned and how your estate plan is structured.
It’s a good idea to review your plan periodically and after major life changes such as marriage, divorce, the birth or adoption of a child, the death of someone named in your plan, a significant change in assets, buying or selling a business, or moving to another state.
Business owners often need their estate and business plans to work together. Planning can address what happens to your ownership interest if you die or become incapacitated, who has authority to make decisions, and how ownership may eventually transition to family members, partners, or another successor.
Special needs planning can help families provide for a loved one with a disability while considering the potential effect an inheritance may have on eligibility for certain needs-based public benefits. A special needs trust may be one part of that strategy.
You don’t need to arrive knowing which documents you need. The initial conversation is about your family, what you own, your concerns, and what you want to accomplish. From there, we can discuss which planning options may fit your circumstances and answer your questions in plain English.
Legacy Planning for Business Owners
Your business is part of what you’ve built—and part of what needs protecting.
If you become incapacitated, who can make decisions? If you die, what happens to your ownership interest? How would a transition affect your family, partners, or employees?
Your estate plan and business succession arrangements should address these questions together.
Skyda Law Group helps business owners coordinate personal and business planning, clarify responsibilities, and prepare for future ownership transitions.
Your Life Changes. Your Plan Should Too.
A new marriage, a growing family, a business transition, a health concern, or the loss of someone you named in your documents can change what you need from your estate plan.
Skyda’s approach is built around an ongoing relationship. We want you to have someone to turn to when questions arise, circumstances shift, or your family needs guidance.
Through our ongoing planning and membership services, we help clients review their arrangements, address changes, and prepare loved ones for the responsibilities they may eventually take on.
The goal is a plan that continues to serve you—and a trusted team your family knows to call.
The goal is a plan that continues to serve you—and a trusted team your family knows to call.
Your Wealth & Legacy Counsel
The name Skyda comes from the Swedish word skydda, meaning “to protect.”
That purpose guides our work.
Founder and Managing Attorney Marcie Swenson brings 15 years of legal experience and a background in nursing to her practice. Her experience caring for people and advising families shapes the way she approaches conversations about health, incapacity, and the future.
She understands that these decisions are personal. They deserve careful listening, clear explanations, and a plan grounded in what matters to you.
Based in Salt Lake County and serving clients throughout Utah, Skyda Law Group helps individuals, families, and business owners protect their wealth, their relationships, and their legacies.
Start With a Conversation.
You don’t have to have everything figured out to take the first step.
Whether you’ve been meaning to create an estate plan or wondering if your existing one still fits, we’re here to help you understand your options.
Schedule a complimentary 30-minute discovery call to discuss your family, your concerns, and what you want to protect.
Bring your questions. We’ll bring the plain English.
Serving individuals, families, and business owners throughout Utah.
This website provides general educational information and does not constitute legal advice. Viewing this website does not create an attorney-client relationship.
