About

About Michael J. Holmes

Michael J. Holmes is a multi-state attorney and licensed real estate professional with nearly 25 years of legal experience. He represents individuals, families, business owners, and high-net-worth clients in estate planning, business law, real estate law, and family law across Idaho, California, Texas, Washington, and North Carolina. His practice combines traditional transactional drafting with practical, results-focused representation in administrative and litigation settings.

Multi-State Practice

Michael’s combination of admissions in five states — Idaho, California, Texas, Washington, and North Carolina — allows him to coordinate matters that cross jurisdictional lines under a single attorney-client relationship. Many of his clients are families and business owners who have relocated to Idaho or the Pacific Northwest from California or Texas, or who maintain residences and assets in multiple jurisdictions. Rather than coordinating between separate firms in each state, those clients work directly with Michael across all of their state-level legal needs.

The firm maintains separate office numbers for each state we serve so clients can reach a number with their state’s area code:

  • Idaho: (208) 696-2772 — Boise and the Treasure Valley
  • Southern California: (714) 464-5188 — Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego, Inland Empire
  • Northern California: (707) 207-8005 — North Bay, Sacramento, San Francisco
  • Texas: (469) 535-6260 — Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Austin, Houston
  • Washington: (206) 279-4780 — Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, Spokane
  • North Carolina: (919) 363-9945 — Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro, the Research Triangle

Practice Areas

The firm focuses on four core practice areas. Click any practice to see the state-by-state implementation.

  • Estate Planning — Wills, revocable and irrevocable trusts, gun trusts, durable powers of attorney, advance health care directives, business succession, and multi-state coordination. State-specific pages: Idaho, California, Texas, Washington, North Carolina.
  • Business Law — LLC and corporation formation, S-corporation tax elections, partnership and shareholder agreements, non-compete and non-solicitation agreements, business sales and acquisitions, and corporate governance.
  • Real Estate Law — Residential and commercial real estate transactions, owner financing, lease agreements, easements and access disputes, water rights (Idaho), and 1031 exchanges. Michael is also a licensed real estate agent in addition to his attorney admissions, providing a unique combined perspective.
  • Family Law (Idaho only) — Divorce, child custody and visitation, child support, spousal support, paternity, civil protection orders, marital agreements, guardianship, and name change for clients in Boise and the broader Treasure Valley.

State Practice Areas

For an overview of how the firm serves each state, including state-specific statutes and procedural framework:

Court Admissions

Michael is admitted to practice in the state courts of all five states the firm serves, as well as relevant federal district courts. He is in good standing with each state bar.

  • Idaho State Bar — all Idaho state courts
  • State Bar of California — all California state courts
  • State Bar of Texas — all Texas state courts
  • Washington State Bar Association — all Washington state courts
  • North Carolina State Bar — all North Carolina state courts
  • Federal District Court admissions in each state where actively practicing

Attorney Skills and Approach

Michael’s reputation is built on plain language, realistic timelines, and outcomes that protect what matters most — family, finances, and future. Clients consistently describe his approach as direct, prepared, and aggressive when the situation requires it, but never aggressive without purpose. He represents clients both in and out of the courtroom, drafts and negotiates contracts under tight deadlines, and coordinates with accountants, financial planners, and real estate professionals on matters that cross disciplines.

He is unusual in the practicing bar in that he is also a licensed real estate professional, with an international network of attorneys and real estate professionals. That dual credential allows the firm to advise on real estate transactions with a perspective that purely transactional attorneys often lack.

Military Service

Prior to becoming an attorney, Michael served in the United States Army as an Armor Crewman on a main battle tank, serving domestically and abroad. He is a lifetime member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). The discipline, attention to detail, and follow-through demanded by armored service inform his practice every day.

Who Michael Represents

  • Families and individuals creating or updating estate plans, including blended families, families with special needs beneficiaries, and clients with NFA-regulated firearm collections.
  • Business owners forming, restructuring, buying, or selling businesses, including LLC and S-corporation formations, succession planning, and disputes between owners.
  • Real estate investors and property owners with residential and commercial holdings, including owner-financing structures, lease drafting, and partition or boundary disputes.
  • Veterans, sportsmen, and firearm collectors who need gun trusts that satisfy ATF requirements and protect succession of NFA items across generations.
  • Relocating families moving between any of the five states the firm serves — particularly Californians and Texans relocating to Idaho — who need their existing legal arrangements rebuilt for their new home state.

Schedule a Consultation

Initial consultations are available by phone in any of the five states the firm serves. Contact the office →

Why a Multi-State Practice

Most lawyers practice in one state. Most clients live their lives that way too. Increasingly, however, families and businesses do not. A retiree splits time between Boise and Palm Springs and owns the cabin in McCall and the rental in San Antonio. A founder incorporates in Delaware, operates in Seattle, hires a remote engineer in Austin, and inherits North Carolina farmland. When a transaction or a death or a divorce touches more than one state, what looks like a single legal question is often three questions answered by three different bodies of law.

The conventional answer is to hire three lawyers. That is sometimes the right answer. Often it is not. Coordinating three independent counsels — each with limited visibility into the others’ advice, each billing separately, each with a different theory of the case — is expensive, slow, and prone to the kind of mistake that only shows up at closing or in probate court. A single lawyer licensed in each of the relevant states removes the coordination tax and replaces it with one consistent strategy. That is the reason the firm is admitted in Idaho, California, Texas, Washington, and North Carolina — not as a marketing claim, but as a practical answer to how multi-state matters actually unfold.

Representative Matters

The examples below illustrate the kind of work the firm handles. They are summaries only; identifying details have been omitted or altered. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome in any future matter.

  • Multi-state estate administration. A retiree died domiciled in Idaho with a vacation home in California and a brokerage account titled to a North Carolina entity. The firm administered the ancillary California probate in parallel with the Idaho informal probate, coordinated a 1031-exchange roll-over of the California property, and resolved an inheritance-tax inquiry from the North Carolina Department of Revenue, all from a single engagement.
  • Closely held business sale across two states. Counsel to a founder selling a Boise software company to a Seattle buyer. The firm drafted and negotiated the purchase agreement, restructured the seller’s estate plan to accommodate the resulting liquidity event, and coordinated installment-note treatment under Idaho and federal law.
  • Boise contested custody with out-of-state relocation. Represented a parent in a contested relocation matter under I.C. § 32-717B where the proposed move was to Texas. The firm coordinated with Texas counsel on choice-of-law and UCCJEA jurisdictional issues without ever requiring the client to retain a second firm.
  • Cross-jurisdictional gun trust. Drafted an NFA trust for a client maintaining residences in Idaho, Texas, and Washington, with the trust drafted to satisfy each state’s law on trustee residency, beneficiary rights, and prohibited-person screening.

Approach to the Work

Three principles shape the engagements the firm accepts and how it handles them. First, plain language. Estate plans, contracts, and pleadings are read by people who are not lawyers and who are often under stress. Documents are drafted to be readable by the client first and the court second. Second, conservative scoping. Most clients are not best served by the most aggressive position available; they are best served by the position that holds up under scrutiny five and ten years later. Third, primary law. Every recommendation rests on a statute, a rule, or a case — cited and explained — not on what is rumored to work or what worked elsewhere. That discipline is the reason the firm publishes plain-text content with code citations on this website rather than marketing copy.

Military Service

Michael served in the United States Army before law school. That experience — managing logistics, briefing under time pressure, and operating in environments where decisions had consequences — informs how the firm runs engagements today. Veteran clients and active-duty service members frequently benefit from familiarity with the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (50 U.S.C. § 3901 et seq.), the Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act (10 U.S.C. § 1408), and the practical realities of PCS moves and deployment in family law and estate planning contexts.