Estate Planning – Wills Trusts and Estates

Estate Planning is essential for anyone, with or without assets. We offer a wide range of estate planning services to fit your specific needs. If you are thinking about an estate plan, you should consider the following and be ready to answer these questions:

• What are my assets? How are my assets owned? Are they titled jointly with someone else or solely owned? Do I have beneficiaries to any of my assets? Are my assets estate assets or non-estate assets?
• How do you I want my assets to be distributed? Who are my heirs or beneficiaries? Should I consider charities? Are any of my beneficiaries old enough to receive the assets? Are any of my beneficiaries disabled or unable to receive the assets for any reason? Should I place conditions on any of my beneficiaries to receive assets?
• Who do I want to administer my assets after I am gone? What if that person cannot do it?
• Do I need a trust?
• Do I want to include any funeral or burial instructions?
• Will my estate trigger any tax issues?
• During your lifetime, who should handle my financial and medical decisions if I become incapacitated or unable to make those decisions?
• Do you I need to plan for Medicaid and Long Term Care Assistance?

With every plan, we include financial and medical powers of attorney as well as advance directives to plan for the worst. We want you prepared for the future. The growing trend is download and sign forms from the internet. But a flawed estate plan will create fatal defects, which may cost thousands to fix. From our experience, internet forms often cause more problems than they pretend to fix. I have countless examples of a small errors causing large issues to your estate plan.

So, how much is this going to cost? You may see flat rates as high as $1,000 or more, but it should depend on your situation. It is our policy to charge an hourly rate from start to finish. Our rates are published here. As said above, we don’t push trusts or added documents that are unnecessary. This is your decision, and we will advise you to make the most reasonable choice with your situation. With most simple estate plans, including the powers of attorney and advance directives, we try to keep the cost under $500.00. This is not a guarantee, but it is a market average among our clients with simple estate plans. If your estate plan includes custom language and multiple revisions, it will be more than the average cost. To help us achieve our goal to lessen the bill, we recommend you come to the appointment with all the above questions answered. This helps keep the cost down. If you are ready to review or revise or start or amend your estate plan, please contact us to make an appointment at 970-242-7847.