Get to Know Candice Aiston

First, the boring stuff: Candice grew up in Kailua, Hawaii, and got her B.A. and J.D. from the University of Hawaii, where she was selected to be a member of the Hawaii Law Review. Candice started her own law firm in Portland in 2008, and has been serving families and businesses in Oregon for nearly two decades now. She is a member of the Oregon State Bar and WealthCounsel.

Candice’s family is what brought her to start her own law firm. She struggled immensely with the idea of joining a regular law firm and working 60-80 hours a week so that she could enjoy one day a week with her family and maybe two weeks per year of vacation, all while putting up with office politics that probably worked against her as a neurodivergent woman and mother. She probably could have paid off her student loans faster if she went that route, but it just wasn't for her. So she decided to start her own firm, and it was a very exciting time for her.

Candice started her firm as an Estate Planning firm for families with young children, which was personal for her—Candice’s mother died when she was a little girl, and without a plan in place. She knew that bad things happen to good people, and that she needed to plan for the care of her kids and assets if something happened to her. Candice brought that personal knowledge into her practice to build comprehensive, personalized plans for her clients. She worried about all of the details and the what-ifs so her clients didn't have to do so.

It’s quite likely that Candice is the only estate planning lawyer in the area who has direct experience with a parent dying when she was a child, and all of the disastrous results that can happen as the result of a failure to plan. Her own experiences as a parent led her to take a special interest in planning for kids (and adults) who are disabled, neurodivergent, and/or mentally ill and may need asset protection so they can retain access to government benefits and be kept safe from people with predatory motives.

As Candice’s practice has expanded to represent all generational levels of estate planning, she has incorporated Elder Law into her practice. She has dealt with the intricacies and complexities of aging and death in her own family, and she has been able to bring that personal experience to her practice helping families to figure out how to pay for assisted living and protect assets through Medicaid and VA Pension Planning, how to ensure that family businesses and cherished properties continue on in the family, how to maximize charitable giving, and how to promote family harmony for generations to come. Candice has also been able to help grieving families to handle the estates of their deceased loved ones, whether that means small estates, probate, trust administration, or some combination thereof. She strategizes with the personal representative, trustee, and other professionals; and takes care of the tedious legal work so that families have space to process their grief and sort through the personal items of their loved one.

A few years into Candice’s practice, she expanded with Business Planning. If Estate Planning was borne from her childhood wounds, Business Planning was borne from the ever-hopeful, optimistic, afraid-and-doing-it-anyway part of her soul. When Candice became a business owner, she loved everything about it. She truly has the spirit of an entrepreneur and she often infects others with it too. Candice understands what your business means to you. It means that you have a dream, a vision, and hope. It means you've stepped off the beaten path to try to create something better for yourself and your family. It often means you are behind in personal planning and building wealth, or that you’ve suddenly caught up to your peers financially and aren’t accustomed to being a person with wealth and assets to understand and protect. It means you've taken risks because you believe they will pay off one day. Candice wants you to achieve your dreams, and the work you do together helps to protect those dreams. 

When Candice isn’t working, she’s probably in one of her winemaking and wine education classes; tending to her wine; hanging out with her family; tending to her neurotic resuce dogs; fussing over her plants; tackling one of many unfinished projects like her school-bus-to-RV conversion; cooking or trying new places to eat; taking long walks around her beloved Portland; road-tripping somewhere weird and wonderful in the Pacific Northwest; traveling, or planning her next adventure.

Candice thinks about life and death, families, relationships, legacies, values, and building memories a lot. “Begin with the end in mind” has always been one of her favorite pieces of advice. (It’s from The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, by Stephen Covey.) She uses this principle to start all of her new work with clients.

Thanks for getting to know Candice. You can schedule a call or meeting with her or contact our office for more information.