The Law Office Of Elizabeth Devolder For Quality Estate Planning With Heart 

(Above, l.-r.) Attorney Elizabeth Devolder, case manager Camelia Howard and attorney Rachael Alexander make up the team you’ll have on your side if you choose the Law Office of Elizabeth Devolder in Tampa Palms. (Photos by Charmaine George)

When Dwan Klein’s dear friend of 37 years called to say her checks were suddenly bouncing, Dwan immediately knew something was wrong. 

Her friend, now 86, had been widowed for many years, had no family, and had signed documents appointing Dwan and her husband as her caregivers if she were to become incapacitated. 

Dwan had no idea that day was so close. 

Dwan’s husband, an accountant, realized someone was stealing from their friend. They were able to determine it was an online scammer, but Dwan’s friend didn’t believe it. She refused to close her accounts to stop the perpetrator. 

At an absolute loss of what to do, Dwan turned to attorney Elizabeth Devolder of The Law Office of Elizabeth Devolder, located in the Tampa Palms Professional Center, just off the Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. exit of I-75. 

“It was the best thing we could have done,” Dwan says. “Elizabeth understood immediately what our issues were, and gave us direction on what do to, and how to do it.” 

Elizabeth says her firm is seeing many instances of such financial exploitation. In addition to this example, she has seen elderly people who have left their financial and medical decisions to some unexpected people, including a dog trainer, someone who painted a person’s car and even a taxi driver. 

“Sometimes, people don’t know who to trust,” Elizabeth says. “Sometimes, their families live far away and aren’t able to be on site, but there’s a neighbor or a person from church who offers to help. We often don’t know those people’s bad intentions until much later.” 

Elizabeth and her team have the legal expertise to help people understand and think through their options when it comes to establishing caregiving and financial responsibility, should they become incapacitated. 

“People come into my office to set up a will and they aren’t thinking about the kinds of decisions that might need to be made if they become ill and can’t make them [for themselves] anymore,” she says. “They have this idea in their mind that, in the future, they will either be dead or perfectly fine. They don’t anticipate incapacity.” 

Elizabeth established The Law Office of Elizabeth Devolder in 2021, five years after she earned her Juris Doctor (J.D.) law degree from the Tampa campus of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Riverview in 2016, following a successful career in advertising and sales management. She had previously earned a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in Corporate Communications from the College of Charleston, SC, in 1997. For five years, Elizabeth worked jointly with her ex-husband Bryan Devolder at their Devolder Law Firm. 

The newer firm’s associate attorney Rachael Alexander was previously a case manager, working closely with Elizabeth and helping her found the firm while going to law school herself. The team also includes case manager Camelia Howard. 

Elizabeth says there are ways to set up your documents to ensure a system of checks and balances, so that no one person has total control and there’s always someone looking out for your best interests, even if it’s not your primary caregiver. 

She emphasizes that this is why setting up an estate plan with an attorney is so important, and that online documents from a website don’t give you personalized, customized advice from an expert who takes your individual circumstances into account. 

There’s another benefit to hiring an attorney, too. The attorney who prepares and signs your documents can testify to your capacity and intentions in court if that becomes necessary. 

Dwan and her husband were grateful for Elizabeth’s immediate action to help their friend. They ended up going to court, where three separate experts evaluated their friend and determined that she was unable to make good decisions for herself. Her paperwork was crystal clear about who she wanted to make decisions on her behalf if that were to happen. 

The court gave Dwan the authority to close the accounts that were being attacked and protect her friend’s assets. By the time they were able to do that, the scammer already had taken $150,000 from their friend. 

“When we met Elizabeth, we knew immediately that she was the right person to help us,” Dwan says. “She knew exactly what we needed to do.” Dwan adds that she is grateful that Elizabeth helped her to ensure her friend’s assets could no longer be stolen. 

“We talk regularly, and we ensure that all of her needs are met,” says Dwan. “It was very difficult, and very hard to see her unable to accept the fact that she was being taken advantage of, but the judge was so kind and actually said, ‘I wish I had a friend like you.’” 

Elizabeth says this is a perfect example of how one situation is very different from another. Not everyone has a friend who would take such good care of them and manage their finances in their best interest. In those cases, when a person has no family present, there are professionals who can manage these decisions for them. 

Sometimes, though, a professional isn’t needed. Remember the dog trainer, taxi driver, and car painter who were given control over someone’s entire estate? One of those actually had no bad intentions at all. 

In fact, Elizabeth says the person who asked her taxi driver to care for her had no family. She had formed a bond with the lady who drove her to all of her appointments. That taxi driver ended up caring for her for the rest of her life, ensuring she had all she needed, and looking out for her best interests. 

“Every family and every person’s situation is different,” she says. “The important thing an attorney can do is help to create a system that avoids the potential for abuse, and can provide testimony about your capacity when you signed the documents.” 

Elizabeth says for her clients, she is willing to take the time to be incredibly detailed, as long as that’s what the client wants. She tells of visiting a client in the hospital who was refusing to eat and the client’s nurses were frustrated. Elizabeth glanced at the papers she had brought with her. 

“I told the nurses his favorite treat was ice cream, and they looked at me like I was a genius,” Elizabeth laughs. “You can have sufficient documents that don’t go into that level of detail, but with it, you can provide direction for how to provide better care for you.” 

Elizabeth also specializes in valuating and managing collections of art or other tangible personal property, such as gun or coin collections, or antiques. 

“It may require calling in a special appraiser who is familiar with that type of collection, because 1980s rock posters are very different than a collection of china,” Elizabeth says. “Our goal is to maximize the value of the collection, which takes some effort, and the person who is best at knowing how to maximize the value is the one who collected it.” 

Elizabeth says she and her team offer their clients experience, knowledge and care that may be hard to find, especially as the market grows and many attorneys offer estate planning. 

“In addition to eight years of experience doing estate planning here in our area, we live and work in Tampa, and we work together to answer our own calls in our own office,” she says. “We’re not working out of a coworking space or having a virtual assistant in another country answering our phones. My clients want to walk in and see the person they spoke to on the phone, and meet my staff, who is then also able to testify about you if necessary. Those details are important to look for when hiring an estate planning attorney.” 

The Law Office of Elizabeth Devolder is located at 5383 Primrose Lake Cir., Suite C, in the Tampa Palms Professional Center. It is open Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m.–6 p.m. For more information or to make an appointment, call (813) 319-4550 or visit ElizabethDevolder.com.

Trust The Law Office Of Elizabeth Devolder For Estate Planning

Attorney Elizabeth Devolder of the Law Firm of Elizabeth Devolder in Tampa Palms poses with art created by her client Mishou Sanchez and other pieces from her personal collection.  “Joy – Get Your Jar” appears prominently in the background, and was a recent acquisition from Mishou. (Photos: Susanna Martinez Photography)

It’s been six months since Elizabeth Devolder launched the Law Office of Elizabeth Devolder, a boutique firm located in the Tampa Palms Professional Center off the Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. exit of I-75 in New Tampa.

Her divorce from attorney Bryan Devolder, with whom she launched the Devolder Law Firm in 2016, was finalized in December, and Elizabeth began a new journey in her new solo practice in January 2021.

Elizabeth’s new firm handles estate planning and probate matters, the same areas of law she handled as a partner at the previous practice.

“Ultimately, we’re doing the same things,” she explains. “We’re just doing them separately.”

Elizabeth says her new practice has started strong. “I have been very well supported through referrals over the last six months from people in the community.”

Elizabeth earned her law degree at the Tampa campus of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Riverview in 2016 after a successful career in advertising and sales management. She had previously earned a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in Corporate Communications from the College of Charleston, in South Carolina, in 1997.

The Law Office of Elizabeth Devolder’s case manager is Rachael Alexander, who has worked with Elizabeth for the last four years and helped found the new firm. Rachael recently graduated from law school herself and passed the Florida bar exam.

“The firm is already growing,” Elizabeth explains. “With Rachael, you’ll get a very experienced case manager, and we’re currently expanding to also have a legal assistant.”

Elizabeth specializes in helping people get their affairs in order, whether they have recently moved to the state, have a child who just turned 18, need legal advice for long-term care, and many other situations.

She says her services are valuable for everyone.

“Everyone needs a Power of Attorney document to manage (their) financial and practical affairs if they’re ever incapacitated,” she says.

This even applies to young adults, who often think they don’t need estate planning because they don’t yet have an “estate” of their own.

“Even if you have nothing,” says Elizabeth, “you still want to make sure someone has the authority to care for you if something happens (to you).”

If a young adult becomes incapacitated, they need someone to be able to tell companies to stop withdrawing money from their account or stop billing them for services, for example. Companies have a responsibility to protect their customer’s privacy, so Power of Attorney documents are required. Records and decisions about medical care don’t automatically go to a parent once a child turns 18.

“It’s so much more expensive if you don’t have these documents in place,” says Elizabeth.

She also says she has loved living in Florida, since a corporate relocation brought her here in 2006. Her experience and eye for detail means she understands what families need to do to update their estate planning documents to respond to and take advantage of Florida laws.

Elizabeth also is developing a specialty helping artists to protect their legacies and collectors to protect their collections.

Elizabeth Devolder (left) opened her private firm in Tampa Palms this January.  

For example, she says, what happens if an artist puts art in a gallery and the gallery closes? Can the creditor take the artwork? Or, what happens if you collect art and antiques and leave them to someone who doesn’t recognize the value of these keepsakes? How do you protect the art from “walking off” during a period of incapacity? How do you maximize the value of it and make it more valuable?

“There are a lot of issues with art,” says Elizabeth, “but not a lot of art lawyers.”

Her thoughtful questions have led one of her clients, local artist Mishou Sanchez, to think about things she’s never considered and take actions to protect her body of work.

“I’ve been working with Elizabeth for years now,” says Mishou, “and she’s fantastic, charming, and knowledgeable about navigating this almost uncharted territory of art law.”

Mishou says her art is now included in her estate plan and Elizabeth has helped her to consider new and interesting ideas, especially related to ownership, copyright and social media.

“She’s really smart,” says Mishou, “It’s kind of fantastic to deal with an educated and knowledgeable woman in the industry.”

Elizabeth also helps artists and others understand their digital assets.

“I got interested in that because I have a client who is making a lot of money off of online instructional videos,” Elizabeth says. “The terms of service for the website say his account is cancelled at his death, but a new law was enacted in 2016 that would allow someone to override the terms, if those are written into his (or her) estate planning documents.”

She says this also could include online photos or statements that come to email.

“If you need to get into the iPhone of someone who has passed away, for example, you need special language in your power of attorney and in your will to give very specific authority for that,” she says. “The process has only been in existence since 2016, so if your will is from before 2016, you need to update it to include that language.”

Elizabeth wants the families she helps to be sure their heirs know what they have and how to get it. For electronic content, she says the family needs access to the catalog (or list) of emails, the content of those emails, and to their loved one’s device so they can get information during incapacity or after death.

She also helps clients with asset protection when they’re facing long-term care costs, and serves clients who have assets in bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and non-fundable tokens (NFTs).

“There’s a whole new way to make money that we haven’t considered before,” she says, “and it’s important to consider those things in your estate.”

The Law Office of Elizabeth Devolder is located at 5383 Primrose Lake Circle, Suite C, in the Tampa Palms Professional Center. It’s open Mon.-Fri., 8:30 a.m.–6 p.m. For more information or to make an appointment, call (813) 319-4550 or visit ElizabethDevolderLaw.com.

Down To Earth Approach Makes Devolder Law Accessible & Successful

Elizabeth and Bryan Devolder of Devolder Law took a non-traditional approach to becoming lawyers, but say they love helping clients with their family law and other legal problems.

When Bryan and Elizabeth Devolder decided to re-invent themselves at the ages of 35 and 37, respectively, they could have picked something easier, like a nice sales job, or buying a successful restaurant franchise, or maybe even starting their own business.

Instead, they both decided to become lawyers. “It’s crazy,” Bryan says.

But it worked.

At Devolder Law, located in the former Hunter’s Green Model & Visitor Center, Bryan and Elizabeth have found immediate success in their new profession. Since opening in August of 2016, Elizabeth says business has been brisk and is well ahead of their projections after just six months; Bryan adds that they have doubled the amount of clients they expected at this time.

Through various forms, including advertising in the Neighborhood News, the internet, word of mouth and a solid reputation in the community, the Devolders are growing.

The secret to their success might be the same thing that drew them into law in the first place — a desire to seek out answers and solve problems, while meeting people’s needs in an informal manner that makes them feel at ease.

“We’re not about us, were about the client,’’ says Bryan. “We recently had a consultation where we were the fifth attorney one client had visited. They decided they wanted to be with us, telling us other attorneys gave a 30-minute sales pitch on how cool the attorneys were. They told us we were the only ones who talked to them about what they wanted.”

The Devolders are graduates of the Western Michigan University-Cooley Law School satellite campus in Riverview, FL.

Bryan was working as a computer engineer for Verizon, and Elizabeth had been in sales for the Yellow Pages when they both decided to pursue a different path.

The seed for a change was planted when Bryan had a mortgage company, and during that time had worked almost daily with a title attorney friend. Bryan would teach him a little about the mortgage business, and his friend would teach him real estate and title law. When both of their businesses were knocked out by the 2008 housing market crash, his friend told Bryan “you need to go to law school. You’re smarter than me and I’m a lawyer, and you’d be great at it.”

Those words stuck with him. When the Devolders were dating, they made a list of 10 things they wanted to do, and taped them to the inside of their bathroom medicine cabinet mirror, where it remains today.

“Get a new car was on the list, get a boat was on the list, and get a J.D. (Juris Doctor) degree was on the list,” said Elizabeth, who was on the debate team in high school and had been told she’d make a great lawyer decades ago but never really thought much of it.  “We had both had enough interest in the law that when we were dating, we said that would be a fun thing to do. Before we had kids. Before anything.”

“We talked about it,’’ says Bryan, “but it was more like, wouldn’t it be cool? Like, hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we went skydiving?”

He married Elizabeth in 2009, and they had their first child in 2010. That put a hold on plans to become lawyers, because there are few choices for people who want to work during the day and become lawyers in their spare time. Stetson’s St. Petersburg campus was an option, but the driving back-and-forth would just add too much time to an already hectic schedule.

It wasn’t too long after that when WMU-Cooley Law School opened its campus in Riverview.

The Devolders visited before the campus was even built, in a little office, and were convinced the school’s schedule and mission, to make the law accessible to everyone, fit theirs. They studied for three months and both passed their Law School Admission Test (LSAT) — finishing within a point of each other, although they exercise a little lawyer-spouse privilege when asked who got the higher score.

In Jan. of 2013, they both started law school, even though Elizabeth knew her journey would also include adding to her family. “I had to commit to having babies in law school,’’ Bryan said, laughing.

The Devolders took afternoon classes, night classes, weekend classes, and they say they couldn’t have done it without family help. “We didn’t go on vacation for three years, I gained 30 pounds, I didn’t golf, no birthdays or anniversaries.”

“I spent my 40th birthday in Secure Transactions Class,’’ says Elizabeth, who also served as the editor-in-chief of the WMU-Cooley Law Review.

How busy was it? A pregnant Elizabeth took a law school exam one morning, and afterwards headed right for the hospital to be induced for the birth of the couple’s second child.

“She got the highest grade in the class,’’ says Bryan, proudly.

Your Team Of Lawyers

They discovered they had very different study habits. Elizabeth is more detail-oriented, and Bryan is more of the big picture guy. “He would get me out of the weeds, and I would get him attending more to the details that if I hadn’t been there, maybe he would have missed,’’ she says.

Elizabeth handles most of the estate planning, with Bryan taking on most of the litigation.

“I like to do the writing and he is very good at thinking on his feet, the litigating part,’’ Elizabeth says. “We use our strengths to help our clients.”

The Devolders have the hardware to show the extent of their success. In the spring of 2015, they competed, along with another student, at the American Bar Association’s Law Student Division Client Counseling Nationals, and beat out 66 other American Bar Association-approved law schools and 111 teams for the title, which Bryan likens to a small, unknown college winning the NCAA Final Four or College Football Playoff.

“It’s a little Cinderella story in terms of law school,’’ he says.

Bryan graduated in Jan. of 2016, and Elizabeth graduated in April of the same year, both finishing at the top of their class. Later in 2016, Elizabeth was among 25 future lawyers named in the National Jurist’s inaugural “Law Student of the Year” feature.

In August of 2016, they opened their firm in Hunter’s Green, the same community where they also live.

The Devolders say WMU-Cooley helped make the law accessible to them, and they now return the favor by making it accessible to their clients. And, while the task of meeting with an attorney can be stressful to many, the Devolders try to put every client at ease.

“We are very down to earth people,” Elizabeth says. “We weren’t born with silver spoons in our mouths, we didn’t become Harvard lawyers at 25. We worked hard our whole lives, we understand the value of money and we understand the challenges that people have. And, we answer the phone.”

Bryan turns his cellphone over and reveals a Batman sticker. “This is the Bat Phone,’’ he says. “We give this number to our clients, we are available 24/7. Ask any other attorney if they will answer their phone at 2 a.m., or if they even give that number out.”

Rachel Hallford says she was blindsided when her husband asked for a divorce after 10 years and two children.

“From the first phone call I had with him, I knew Bryan was the attorney for me,” Rachel says. “He is such an amazing guy who is really there for his clients. He can be reached any time no matter whether the issue is big or small. I personally had a few freak outs and I didn’t want to bother him but I called anyway and he was so nice, patient, supportive and calmed me down every time.”

While many attorneys may focus solely on one aspect of the law, recommending other lawyers to handle related problems, Elizabeth says Devolder Law will take extra steps to make things easier for its clients. They have helped family law clients who have to sell their homes with lease agreements and sales contracts, reviewed various contracts and deeds and dealt with tax and bankruptcy issues.

“Problems don’t happen in a bubble,’’ she says. “We solve legal problems, and related problems. The concept of sending people away to go to another attorney only benefits the attorney by keeping their job nice and small and simple.”

The Devolders do not let conventional wisdom slow them down. When they set their minds to something, they say, they get it done, whether it’s going back to school to become lawyers, or guiding a client through a difficult process.

Devolder Family Law is located at 8709 Hunters Green Dr., at the front of Hunter’s Green before entering the community. right before  It is open Mon.-Fri., 8 a.m.-5:30 p.m. For additional information, search “DevolderLaw” on Facebook, visit DevolderLaw.com or call (813) 724-3880.