What is it about me and my past that makes me uniquely qualified to represent you?
Although I started out as a young boy in Wichita, I spent most of my childhood through my high school years at Garden City, Kansas. When I was 11, I inherited my brother’s paper route. I had 120 copies of the Garden City Telegram to deliver on my bicycle every afternoon. At this time, in the mid to late 1960’s, in order to get paid, I had to walk my paper route every month over several evenings to complete the collections. Part of what took me so long was the fact that many of my older customers wanted someone to talk to and over the 3 years I had the paper route I heard hundreds of personal stories. More than anything, I became a good listener. Even today I think that I honed my listening skills at a very young age.
I also learned to work hard and that has stuck with me as well. I have been employed or had a job ever since I started that paper route when I was eleven years old. Also, during that same time period I was in the Boy Scouts. In fact, I was in a family of scouts. My father was a Troop Leader and both of my brothers and I attained the rank of Eagle Scout. Most of what I learned that has made me successful I learned during those growing up years. Work hard, tell the truth, be prepared, serve others, never stop learning.
I did not initially go to law school after college. When I graduated from Emporia State University in 1977, my wife, Elaine, and I went to western Kansas to teach school. I had an undergraduate degree in English and taught High School English at Dodge City Senior High School for three years, from 1977 to 1980. During the summers I farmed and worked for the Kansas 4-H foundation. However, I was driven to go see what I could do in competition with other adults. I had never really pushed myself in high school or college and I wanted to see how I performed against others if I gave it everything I had. I did so, and it turned out that after my first year at Washburn University School of Law I was in the top ten percent of my class of 220 students and was asked to participate in the Law Journal.
I knew that I wanted to be involved in estate planning and took all of the courses in law school that would help me be well educated in this area of the law. Courses that covered Probate, Wills, Trusts, closely held business entities, income taxation, Federal estate taxation, were very much a part of my curriculum. I graduated from Washburn in December of 1982 and have practiced law in Kansas ever since. Between all of the various experiences I have had in representing clients and planning for them over that time period, as well as countless hours of continuing education, I have had a world of experience and education over that period.
This is what I bring to the relationship when I meet with clients and begin to counsel them in what their options are, and how many different ways they might get from here to there. More than that, I think I bring compassion and empathy, as well as a vast amount of experience to explain how we will get through it together when there is a crisis, such as a severe illness, fear that assets will be lost, or even incapacity or death of a loved one. I simply love working with people, solving problems, and building new relationships.
~ Tim J. Larson
- Tim J. Larson has clients all over the state of Kansas and parts of Oklahoma. He has been admitted to practice law in both states. He has planned for many business owners, including farm and ag related families. In recent years he has worked with multi-family and multi-generational farm and ranch families to coordinate planning.
- Larson has contributed to 3 books, “LEGACY: Plan, Protect and Preserve Your Estate;” “GENERATIONS, Planning Your Legacy;” and STRICTLY BUSINESS, Planning Strategies for Privately Owned Businesses.” For over 20 years, he has been a member of e.Planners Educational Alliance, Inc., a select group of about 30 estate planning attorneys from across the country that meets three times per year for various continuing education programs and also collaborate to provide sophisticated estate planning services to clients around the country.
- In addition, Tim J. Larson is a member of NAELA, the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, the Kansas Bar Association Elder Law, Real Estate, Probate and Trust Committee, the Wichita Bar Association Probate Committee, the Wichita Estate Planning Council, Wealth Counsel and Elder Counsel.
- For many years Mr. Larson has spoken publicly, and has presented continuing education courses to attorneys, accountants, financial planners, and life insurance professionals on estate planning topics. He has spoken on estate planning topics for the Kansas State University Foundation in Manhattan on numerous occasions, as well as for various financial institutions.
