|
|
Wills and Estate Planning
What You Can Expect From Us:
We will have an initial meeting that will last between one and two hours. We will talk about you, about your family, about your dispositive wishes, about incapacity planning, about end of life decision making, about your income, and about your assets. If there is a federal or state estate tax planning issue that needs to be addressed, we will talk about that. In many instances, we will talk about the pros and cons of creating a funded revocable inter-vivos trust (sometimes referred to as a “living trust”) as part of the estate plan.
You will leave the meeting with a list of documents we will need to review. The list may include things such as a copy of the deed to your home, a copy of recent bank or other account statements, information about your life insurance and information about retirement benefits.
We will ask you to obtain copies of your current beneficiary designation statements for your retirement benefits, life insurance policies, and any annuities you may own. We also will ask you to obtain blank change of beneficiary forms for each of these assets or accounts.
Shortly after the initial meeting you will receive a draft of the documents we have prepared. The documents will be accompanied by a letter that summarizes the estate plan, and describes the content of the documents. The letter will be detailed, but, at the same time, will be clear and easy to understand.
If you have questions about the documents or the letter that summarizes your estate plan, we will discuss your questions on the phone or meet with you at the office. The choice of how we communicate with each other to address your questions will be your choice to make.
When you are ready to sign the documents you will come back to the office to do so. If we have not heard from you within a reasonable period of time after we mailed the documents to you, we will contact you to follow up. We will not be pushy or aggressive, but we do want to help you bring this important process to a conclusion.
When you sign the estate planning documents we also will make any beneficiary designation changes that may be required for your retirement benefits, life insurance policies, and annuities. We will follow up to be sure that these changes have been reflected in the records of the company that manages the account or issued the policy.
When you come to the office to sign the estate planning documents, you will receive an Agenda that describes everything you are signing that day, and that describes the ongoing follow up activity that may be required.
We will meet with you as often as needed to facilitate the implementation of the estate plan. You will be encouraged to call us or email us with any questions that arise at any time. When you call, you will not feel like you are annoying us by calling; rather, you will feel welcomed and at ease. We will answer your questions fully and clearly. If we tell you we cannot answer a particular question it is because we need to do some research so as to be sure our answer is correct and complete.
< Back
|
|
 |
