Marjorie Stephens retired from full time practice on January 1, 2021.

Marjorie does not retain any original documents and does not retain any of her client’s personal documents. All files are maintained electronically. Files for an estate are retained for eight years. Estate planning files, including copies of the documents Marjorie prepared which were signed by her clients are currently held in electronic form. As of January 2024, these files are held in a searchable format and can be accessed. Marjorie will be copying these remaining files to either a hard drive or to the cloud within the next year to be retained for a longer period; however, the documents will not be searchable in the longer-term retention form. If the documents are readily accessible, Marjorie can provide a copy of a document retained on her system. To obtain a copy of a document for one of Marjorie’s former clients, the client or a person the client has authorized to receive the information, can contact Susan Kagan at susan@mjslaw.com. Please allow for a delay in responding since Susan does not access this email account daily. If multiple documents are being requested or if at the time the document is requested, the document has been transferred to a hard drive or the cloud, then there will be a charge for Susan’s time to access and send the requested documents.

The Attorneys page has contact information for the attorneys who were attorneys with the Stephens-Guthrie PLLC law firm: Shannon Guthrie, Karen Wheeler, Don Shapiro, Terrell Dismukes, and Jack Hales. Shannon, Karen, and Terrell are working with the Guthrie Law Firm. Jack has established his own practice. Don is working on a limited basis with a few of his long time clients.

Ben Stephens passed away in early 2019 and all of the files for Ben’s clients are held by his successor Jack Hales.

There are many excellent estate planning attorneys in Dallas. The Selection Guidance section provides information on selecting an estate planning attorney for clients’ use in that process.

Several of Marjorie’s clients have asked for a referral to an attorney with the (former) Stephens-Guthrie PLLC firm. Since 2009 the attorney with whom Marjorie worked most closely is Karen Wheeler. Karen is familiar with Marjorie’s work, documents, and plans, as well as with many of her clients. Marjorie highly recommends Karen; however, Karen is limiting her practice so should be contacted for her availability.