Michelle Gonzalez-Tyler

Personal Introduction

Michelle Gonzalez-Tyler is a graduate of Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan. She has over 16 years of legal experience in criminal defense and civil matters in her own practice, which she established from day one of getting her license to practice. She has seen first-hand the intricacies of a courtroom and wishes to help people avoid the courtroom and taxes on a family's legacy if at all possible. She grew up in Chicago, Illinois, and married her husband Scott in 2014. They started their lives together in Bolingbrook, IL. She hopes to establish strong roots in her community and provide services that support families for generations. In Law School, I joined the estate planning clinic. I'm not sure why that was my interest at the time, but then, over the years, sprinkles of estate planning came up and came into full force in 2020. In the estate planning clinic, I only drafted wills, but there is so much more to estate planning than wills. Then, as a licensed attorney, my first encounter with any estate planning was with a client who had her property in a trust with her name as the beneficiary. I came to learn later the importance and benefits of having property. I wish to share that information with my new clients in a trust. So, for the next 16 years, after passing the bar exam and receiving my license to practice law, I represented clients charged with serious felonies, constantly going to trial and, at times, negotiating pleas. But in the last three years, I saw how the passing of people around me could affect the family long term. Some had plans in place, and most did not or thought they did, only for their families to realize they did not know what was left in terms of property, retirement accounts, and even memories that could have been video-recorded so that their families could continue to experience them and keep their spirit alive for generations to come. I hope to help families plan for that end and for the legacy they wish to leave to their families.