For adults, our firm has seen that often having a Will is not enough to keep your family out of court and conflict. We refer to the “foundation” of every plan as a Will, Healthcare Directive, Power of Attorney, Living Will, HIPAA Authorization Documents, and a comprehensive stand-alone plan to Protect Your Children for clients with minor children.  

We use this saying to help our clients understand how a Will functions: “Where there is a Will, there is a Probate.”  Although having a Will may accomplish a client’s goals, it’s important to understand that having a Will alone does not avoid the need for Probate.  Additionally, a Will only focuses on what happens after you die. If you are ever to become incapacitated—due to an unexpected incident, illness, or age— a Will does not appoint someone you trust to manage your affiars or care.  To decide whether having a Will adequately protects the things you have and the people you love, Schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session to get educated, to make empowered decisions.

Put simply, Probate is a legal process that occurs after someone dies to handle their Estate.  During Probate, the court will determine if the Last Will and Testament left behind is valid and an Executor or Personal Representative is appointed to oversee the process and settle the estate.  All the assets of the deceased must be located and a value of the assets must be determined. All creditors are notified, final bills and taxes are paid, and anything remaining is distributed to beneficiaries. The same process is used for someone who dies without a Will, however the State law will make some important decisions for you, rather than a Will. There are a couple of important things you should know about probate:

• It’s a public process: A lot of information you might consider to be private will be made public— information about you, your family and your assets will all be in the public record. 
• Probate is Lengthy: Generally, the probate process is greater than 6 months, and in some cases can be longer than a year. This may vary depending on the complexity of the estate and the local jurisdiction. 
• Probate is Costly: Some costs associated with probate are court filing fees, fees paid to the Executor, attorney’s fees, accounting fees, appraisal fees, business valuation fees, or other miscellaneous fees such as creditors notice publication fees. Nationally, the average probate is said to be between 3-7% of the total assets of the estate. The costs may vary depending on the complexity of the estate and the local jurisdiction.  Additionally, Executors or Personal representatives could be required to pay for and post a bond, if the requirement is not properly waived within your planning documents. 
• Probate is Totally Avoidable:  By working with an estate planning attorney, you can learn ways to develop an estate plan that will avoid the probate process. As we like to say, “Probate is a lawsuit you file against yourself after you die with your own money, for the benefit of your creditors.” If probate is something you’d like to avoid, contact us or schedule an Introduction Call to discuss how. 

Schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session to learn whether your estate will be subject to probate, what the process might cost, how long your family might have to wait to access necessary funds, and how you might avoid the process completely. 

Unfortunately, most plans don’t work because much of what is sold as “estate planning” is little more than word processing. Even if you work with a traditional estate planning lawyer, you are asked a few questions and then the drafter decides which “plan” is right for you. They’ll quickly churn out some documents for you by doing little more than a “search and replace” of your family’s name and then hitting the “print” button. This is not estate planning– it’s document drafting. 

Almost anyone can prepare their own “legal documents” these days on the internet.  But we have seen time and time again, families of those that DIY their plan pay thousands of dollars in legal fees to clean up the mess that was caused by using online “legal documents” without the guidance of an attorney. DIY documents are typically designed to cover the most basic needs and may not be tailored to state-specific requirements. 

Of course, documents are important, but our process is not document centered— it’s centered around people. Documents memorialize important decisions. We focus on serving as your trusted advisor, guiding you through the important discussions and considerations to make those decisions.  Schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session so we can start guiding you through those important decisions. 

As you can imagine, we get the question “how much does an estate plan cost” quite frequently. And, it’s a good question that we want to answer for you as clearly as we can, given that we don’t use a “one-size-fits-all” planning approach with our clients.  

For what it’s worth, we believe you should think very hard about whether you want to work with a lawyer who can tell you exactly what your plan would cost via email or over the phone, without knowing anything about you, your loved ones, and your goals. 

In fact, that’s why most estate plans fail. People “shop around” based on price (because they don’t know any other way to shop for an estate plan), and end up with a traditional plan, which is a set of documents that do not actually work when they are needed. 

If a plan is not tailored to your needs and values and you get the exact same documents all the other clients get, how can the plan accomplish your specific goals? How can the plan instil your specific values or accurately preserve your legacy for the people you love?

We’ve priced our estate planning at the intersection of affordability and effectiveness. That’s why we start all of our plans with a Life & Legacy Planning Session. 

The session is designed to get you more financially organized than you have ever been before, protecting your hard-earned assets from being lost to the State Department of Unclaimed Property. Even if you never do any planning with us, the Life & Legacy Planning Session alone is a hugely valuable process, because you will create a full inventory of your assets before we meet, which ensures your loved ones know what you have and where to find it. 

When we meet for your planning session, we will review everything you own, and discuss everyone you love, and you will understand exactly what would happen in the event of your death or incapacity.  

If you do not have a plan, we will cover the “do nothing plan” the State has for you. If you do have a plan, we’ll review your current plan with a “check up” and walk through how your plan would work for you. If you are not happy with your current plan or your State’s plan, you will tell us what you would want to change, and we will look at the most effective, efficient and affordable way to achieve your goals.

Here’s the most important part for you to know about this: you will be making informed, educated, and empowered decisions for the people you love, not just “shopping around” based on price.

And the best part– you will actually choose your own flat fee based on your budget and the planning options that are most important to you. There truly is no one-size-fits-all choice with our process. 

We have created a process to educate you so you can make empowered, informed choices about what you want for the people you love – not simply choosing the “cheapest” option because you don’t have any other basis for making your decisions.

Keep in mind,  you may think you “know you want something simple,” “you don’t have that much,” or you “know you need” a particular type of plan.  Without question, we have seen almost every client have a very eye opening experience, making much more comprehensive decisions for themself than they intended, after getting educated.  

Now, you understand how we work. So you understand that it’s not possible to give you a “standard price” because your personalized plan isn’t “standard”– it’s tailored to you. But we can provide a provide you a fee range of what our plans cost, so you’ll have a better idea of the fee you might choose:

• A Life & Legacy Planning Session process is $750. An Estate Plan Review and Checkup is $750. Those fees are applicable if you come in fully uneducated, but can be waived if you commit to doing a little pre-meeting homework ahead of time.

• Our three levels of comprehensive plans (or an update of your existing plan) range between $1,200 and $7,200, depending on the choices you make during the Life and Legacy Planning Session. 

Whether you work with us or another estate planning attorney, we implore you not to “shop around” based on price, but rather which attorney will help you make informed, empowered, educated decisions for the people you love. Of all the ways you choose to spend your money, make sure you know how your investment in a plan will impact your family.  Schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session so we can guide you through our process and you can  choose the fee that accomplishes your individual planning goals. 

The HIPAA Privacy Rule under the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act prohibits health care providers and insurance providers from sharing your health information. This rule prohibits medical information from being shared with your spouse, family members, or other important people in your life,  even during an emergency. Our plans include other documents to address your healthcare decisions such as a Living Will or Advanced Healthcare Directive, but we also prepare stand-alone HIPAA authorizations to ensure your loved ones have access to important health information when it’s needed.  Schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session to learn more about how a HIIPA Authorization fits into your comprehensive estate plan. 

May people think that verbally telling their spouse, partner, or children what they would want to happen if they were ever in a vegitative state or coma is enough. That’s plain wrong.  

Many can recall the famous Terri Schiavo Case, in which the lack of a Living 

Will lead to a long drawn-out court battle between Terri Shiavo’s husband and parents. Think about it– how could a court or medical professionals make decisions based on something you said once or twice in passing? A Living Will spares your family the anguish of making these extremely difficult decisions. It also helps medical professionals and, if ever necessary, courts, to know your wishes, without relying on something you said to somebody once. You can spare your loved ones by preparing a Living Will. Schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session to learn more about how a Living Will fits into your comprehensive estate plan.

You are a great parent, working hard every day to ensure your children are cared for and safe.  But what would happen if the unexpected happened to you?  

Are you part of the 69% of parents who have neglected to name legal guardians for your children?  Maybe you have named guardians. Are you sure you have avoided the most common mistakes almost every parent makes when naming guardians? 

We walk you through all the unique planning decisions that should be made when you’re planning for minors to make sure you avoid the mistakes that others have made. So frequently, traditional estate planning lawyers ask parents to name one or two people in their Will as guardians for minor children. But remember, a Will is only effective if you die.  What happens if you become incapacitated? Our stand alone plan prepares for that. 

What happens to your children if those you’ve named live far away? What happens if you children are with a babysitter or your Will cannot be located quickly? Our stand alone plan prepares for that.  We name short term guardians and provide emergency procedures to make sure your children are kept out of state custody, even just for a day. 

In large part, most estate plans are woefully inadequate to address all the complexities of preparing how your minor children should be cared for, if you can’t be around to care for them. We believe much more is necessary, and we’ll walk you through putting together a stand-alone plan to Protect your Children. Schedule a Protecting Your Children Planning Session to develop a stand-alone plan, or a Life & Legacy Planning Session to see how a stand-alone plan to protect your children  fits into your comprehensive estate plan.