Meet Caroline Ortego
Hi, I’m Caroline,
Estate planning and probate attorney, mother and coffee lover. I was born and raised in Louisiana. In 2008, I graduated from LSU Law and moved to Texas the very next year.
My favorite part of being a Texan is the Houston Rodeo and I sure get a kick out of wearing cowboy boots in public without raising eyebrows or looking out of place!
When I was young, I was the girl who was always striving for a solution. I’m a puzzle person and I’m often intrigued by a difficult problem that requires critical thinking to resolve.
During my first year of law school, those qualities were put to the test. Hurricane Katrina had left the New Orleans area devastated, so I joined attorneys, and other law students, as we volunteered in the recovery effort.
Education that goes beyond textbook.
At the time, I was volunteering with The Pro Bono Project in New Orleans. We cleared title so that people who had lost their homes could qualify for federal disaster funding to rebuild.
The people we helped would not be eligible until they could prove ownership of their homes. Often the last person in the chain of title was the parent, grandparent, or even great-grandparent of the person trying to re-build.
I saw how failing to use simple estate planning—failing to convey property properly for one or two generations—drastically reduced the value of the property being passed on, and often prevented people from re-building at all.
Seeing Katrina survivors lose assets that were built by their parents and grandparents, and become permanently displaced, strongly influenced my chosen practice areas. Through my work, I strive to help my clients preserve assets and make good decisions that will benefit their family for generations to come.
