‘The Legacy They Want to Leave’

When estate planning and probate attorney Laura Hoexter asks clients how they want to be remembered, typical responses range from leaving generous family trusts to gifting alma maters.

But sometimes clients toss what she calls “curveballs.” One man asked that mourners throw toast into his grave to demonstrate that he was “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” Another wanted his ashes mixed with the mashed potatoes at his funeral reception.

“I’ve had a request to include a zombie apocalypse provision in the will,” says Hoexter, including providing food and resources for the undead. “I’ve set up trusts for those taken in the Rapture who expected to return to Earth.”

Hoexter’s job, she says, is to listen. “I love helping people express their final wishes,” she says.

Over almost three decades, Hoexter has helped craft and administer more than 3,000 wills and related documents for all manner of clients—including Microsoft millionaires and Boeing executives, professional athletes and lottery winners.

Along the way, she’s served as president of the East King County Estate Planning Council and is an officer of Seattle Philanthropic Advisors Network. She’s also a member of Washington Women in Tax.

“There is no playbook for estate planning,” says Daver Tiryakioglu, a longtime Hoexter client. “She gets that.  She knows how to listen to her clients, all their dreams and hopes.”

A Merrill Lynch managing director and wealth management advisor, Tiryakioglu turned to Hoexter to plan his own estate. “It’s about empathy; genuine caring,” he says. “And that comes naturally to Laura.”

Hoexter says people often have misconceptions of estate lawyers, clinging to the Agatha Christie image of a sober-faced guy in a black suit, slowly and deliberately reading the will of the dearly departed to a roomful of grieving family members. That works in Hollywood, but not in real-world estate planning. Wills typically run to 30 pages or more, “single-spaced,” she explains—far more than family members want or need to sit through.

The legal issues can get complicated. “People don’t understand what community property means, that it is not always a 50-50 split,” she says. “[And] they don’t think about tax implications.”

Helping clients understand the stakes is a big part of her job. 

“I provide peace of mind, allowing clients to feel better prepared for death or incapacity,” she says. “I help build the legacy they want to leave after they’re gone.”

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Hoexter grew up on Long Island, where her grandparents ran a butcher shop after escaping the Holocaust. As a child, she looked up to her older sister Jill, who went on to law school and became a district attorney in Manhattan.

“I grew up in her shadow,” she recalls. “I was interested in environmental law, wanted to save the world. “

She worked for the Sierra Club in Washington, D.C., then went off to law school at the University of Washington. “I just loved the outdoors, the people,” she recalls. She decided to stay. But environmental law, she says, proved to be “too combative.” Greens versus business, my backyard versus your backyard. So she switched to estate planning, which she found just as interesting—and more collaborative.

“I was fascinated by people’s hopes and aspirations, and learned to help build estates to match those aspirations,” she says.

“Laura has always had a strong work ethic,” says Nancy Zaragoza, Hoexter’s law school classmate and now a professor of lawyering skills at Seattle University School of Law. “She very analytical, asking the tough questions until she figures something out. She’s also confident and determined to achieve what she has set out to do, but at the same time does not like conflict. She has a generous spirit and is very attuned to how she affects others.” 

After earning her J.D., Hoexter got an LLM in tax law and went to work for an Eastside firm.

In 2005, she was lured across the lake to Helsell Fetterman in Seattle, where she still practices.

“Laura has a very regimented, diligent energy,” says Scott Collins, the former Helsell managing partner who recruited her. “But she also has a masterful bedside manner. She can deal with a high-tech executive one day, an elderly widow the next day, but still relate.”

Some estate planners build a preexisting package, then try to fit their clients into it, Collins adds. Hoexter does the opposite, quizzing her clients, then building an estate plan that fits their circumstances.

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Many people, especially younger ones, have given little or no thought to their estates, Hoexter says. “Those twentysomethings who are making millions and have no idea what they want to do with it.”

This work requires far more than a phone conversation, Hoexter says. Even during the pandemic, she preferred meeting clients one-on-one.

Then come those curveballs.

Like the client who wanted to give away his deceased wife’s personal effects “without liability, in the event she came back from the dead and wanted her stuff back.”

Yet another wanted “a Viking funeral,” his body floating on a raft that would be set afire by a flaming arrow.

Often the client’s wishes have to do with cremains. Sprinkle my ashes in the beach at Puget Sound, on my favorite golf course, or at Disneyland. All no-nos.

“When it comes to final wishes, people often don’t care whether something is legal,” Hoexter says. “They just have a vision of how they want to spend eternity.”

In the movies, the hero stands on a beach and empties the beloved ashes into the sea. In reality, Hoexter says, people tend to dump the ashes the wrong direction—upwind, a la The Big Lebowski.

Either way, such “last wishes” are usually not included in the will, but in a separate document called a “disposition of remains.” And what becomes of those remains is ultimately up to the family, not the deceased, she adds.

Occasionally, the client’s idiosyncrasies show up in the will itself. Hoexter has crafted an estate plan that leaves an entire estate to one person … to be determined.

“When the testator dies,” Hoexter explains, “a list of people will be given a riddle and a map and sent on a scavenger hunt around the world to find the key.”

Though she says that will was fun to write, Hoexter hopes the client will reconsider because it could be “a nightmare to administer.”

Another time, she drafted a will for a client who wanted his estate to include a million-dollar donation to the Ukrainian army.

Most people’s aspirations are more conventional, and sometimes moving. She helped grieving parents set up a foundation in memory of their child who had died in a tragic accident.

Other clients want trust funds set up so their children will benefit but won’t become dependent on their inheritances.

Professional athletes with huge contracts pose special problems, she says. “A 7-foot guy walks in my door and I’m oblivious to what he does. But he needs to make a plan.” Anything for a celebrity poses extra complications, with issues that go beyond assets and estate, such as image rights.

Winners of big lottery prizes or personal injury awards also pose challenges. “Some turn it into an opportunity to do something worthwhile, and we try to steer them that way,” she says. “But they may or may not listen. It’s easy to gamble or drink it away. I’ve seen cases of people blowing it.”

Hoexter’s skills and experience really come into play with large, complicated estates, Collins says. “Some lawyers don’t want to deal with those estates, but Laura is comfortable with them. She gets the difficult and complex estates with multiple issues.”

However complex a plan might be, a key objective is to keep bickering to a minimum, Hoexter says.

She recalls family members who fought over giveaway drinking glasses from McDonalds, and others who feuded over a nonworking refrigerator. “People get vicious,” Hoexter says, shaking her head. “When that happens, I have a team of litigators who thrive on conflict. I don’t. My goal is to avoid conflict.”

The best way for an attorney to achieve that goal? She cups an ear. “Listen!” she says.

Lawyers may make good debaters, articulate speakers, but they also need to know when and how to stop and pay attention. “I don’t have a secret sauce,” Hoexter says. “I just take the time to listen and then be responsive.”

Seizing the Weekends

When Laura Hoexter needs to relax, she comes home from holiday.

Sitting on a sunny beach is not her style. She prefers adventure vacations.

“Much of my day is drafting and moving numbers from this account to that one, but when a client calls you in a state of grief and says, ‘What do I do?’ it feels pretty good to have the experience and expertise to answer those questions,” Hoexter says. “It also reminds me that life is short, so I need to seize my evenings, weekends and vacations to get out and enjoy it to its fullest.”

Over the years, her yen for adventure has taken her zip-lining from 53 stories up a Dubai skyscraper, whitewater rafting through the Grand Canyon, cliff-jumping in Cambodia, snowmobiling across glaciers—and more.

Hoexter shares her adventures with her husband, an actor and writer “with the same sense of adventure and definition of insanity,” she says.

Perhaps the highlights were two European tours, in 2015 and 2019, led by Competitours, an “Amazing Race for regular people,” she says. Over a week or two, she and her husband competed with several other couples, all strangers, galivanting across the continent in these friendly contests. Highlights included boating in Belgium, rock climbing in Switzerland, exploring tunnels in the Netherlands, and
skeet-shooting at the base of the Matterhorn. 

“Our goal was to not finish last,” she says of the 2015 competition. “The biggest surprise was when they announced we came in first!”

The race was filmed by a documentary crew, and the film debuted at the Cleveland International Film Festival.

She admits to more than her share of misadventures as well. “I’ve been charged by an elephant in South Africa. I was thrown off a horse in Iceland. Camping in British Columbia, I was sat on by a bear.”

In those incidents, she was “bruised, but not seriously injured.”

That’s a lot of risk. But rest assured, her will is in order.