Flat fee or hourly for a Texas will? What the quote covers, and what falls outside

A fee quote for estate planning work arrives in one of two shapes, and the shape tells you more about the engagement than the dollar figure does. A flat fee says the attorney has seen this situation often enough to price it, and is willing to absorb the risk that your file takes longer than average. An hourly rate says the opposite: the work is unpredictable enough, or your facts unusual enough, that the meter stays on. Neither is a better deal in the abstract. What matters is whether the pricing model matches the file, and whether the engagement letter defines the boundary between the two clearly enough to argue about later.

What a flat fee is actually buying

A flat fee package for a married couple in Texas typically covers a defined stack of documents: two wills, two statutory durable powers of attorney, two medical powers of attorney, directives to physicians, HIPAA authorizations, and often declarations of guardian. The fee usually includes an initial meeting, one round of drafting, a review of the drafts with you, and a signing appointment with the notary and witnesses the formalities require. Read the scope paragraph and count the documents against that list. If the number of documents in the letter is smaller than the number in the conversation you had, the difference is where the second invoice comes from.

The value in a flat fee is not just price certainty. It removes the incentive to hesitate before calling with a question, which matters because the questions people delay asking (whether the retirement account beneficiary form overrides the will, whether the house should be deeded into a trust) are usually the ones that decide whether the plan works. Ask directly how many revision rounds the fee covers, and whether a call six months from now to ask about a beneficiary designation is inside the number or billed separately.

Where hourly billing tends to be the honest answer

Hourly work shows up in estate settlement more than in planning, because a probate file's length depends on facts nobody controls. An uncontested independent administration with cooperative heirs and a clean title moves along a predictable path. A file with an unrecorded deed, a half sibling nobody has an address for, a claim from a nursing facility, or an heir who disputes the will moves at whatever pace the disputes allow. Some attorneys quote a flat fee for the routine probate and shift to hourly the moment a contest is filed, which is a reasonable structure as long as the trigger is written down rather than left to judgment.

When the quote is hourly, the number to press on is not the rate but the estimate and its assumptions. Ask what the range looks like for a file with these facts, what would push it to the top of that range, and who does which tasks. Paralegal time billed at a lower rate for citations, notices, and inventory preparation can change the total substantially, and a letter that names both rates is easier to check against the statements you receive.

The questions that move the number

Certain facts reliably reprice a planning engagement, and a careful reader raises them before the quote hardens rather than after. A blended family with children from a prior marriage changes the drafting substantially, because Texas community property rules and a surviving spouse's homestead rights interact in ways a simple mirror will does not address. Business interests, rental property in another state, a special needs beneficiary, a child you would rather not hand a lump sum at eighteen, and any estate large enough to raise federal estate tax questions with the IRS all push the file toward custom drafting. Say all of it in the first meeting.

Then look for what the letter excludes. Deed preparation and recording, filing fees, funding a trust after it is signed, retitling accounts, and future amendments are commonly outside a will package, and each is a real cost. A codicil later often costs more than including the provision now. Asking for the exclusions in writing gets you a clearer picture than asking whether the price is good.

Reading the letter itself

The engagement letter should name who the client is, which matters when a couple hires one attorney jointly and one of them later wants a private change. It should say what happens if you stop responding, whether unused retainer funds are refundable, how conflicts are handled, and what the file transfer looks like if you move on. A letter that answers those questions without being asked is usually attached to a practice that has thought about the awkward cases, which is the same quality you want in the drafting.

Sign it when the scope on the page matches the plan in your head. That match, more than the fee itself, is what you are checking.