I just completed a seven-column series about setting up your affairs so your wealth doesn’t pass through your estate upon your death.

I was challenged by a reader who endured what must have been a horrendous legal battle over his father’s estate. He accused lawyers of being “estate chasers”—a play on the disparaging term for lawyers, term “ambulance chasers”—having been told if a will gets contested, estate lawyers make big money.

Indeed, fights over an estate can be incredibly expensive. If you structure things so your wealth is either spent or given away before you die, and anything else passes directly to beneficiaries outside of your estate, there’s no estate to fight over.

After spending seven weeks pounding that drum, it’s important I emphasize that having wealth pass........

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