If you've met with an estate planning lawyer before (or even if you never have), we want to share with you how meeting with us is different.
Most Estate Planning Meetings
In some cases, you may go to your initial attorney meeting, tell your attorney you want to make a will, describe how you want your assets distributed at death, pay a fee, then come back a few days later to sign your will. And you think you have an estate plan.
In other cases, you may have a meet-and-greet-type session where the attorney describes various legal documents then quotes you a fee to provide those documents. The information shared in either of those meetings may not address your unique family situation or help you understand how specific your documents can be based on variables relevant to your family or that there is more to consider beyond the cost of these documents. Deciding what you need based solely on the cost of documents could lead to a plan that doesn't address the the personal aspects of your circumstance and won’t serve your family when they need the most support.
We’ve seen it: people have brought their plans to us for review. Sometimes they have a trust but when we talk it through we learn the trust was never funded, the will was not executed, or the agents who are named are no longer viable options. These unfinished or outdated plans can be worse than no plan at all, in some cases. At least with no plan, the family knows what to expect. With an outdated plan, the family has a false sense of security only to learn at the worse possible time that the plan doesn't work. Or even worse, the plan does work but names people who long-ago should have been removed.
Our entire process, which we sometimes call Life & Legacy Planning, is designed to support a confident, controlled, and fulfilled plan that not only leaves your family with a plan down the road, but makes your life better right now.
Family Wealth Planning Session™
Our process is designed to support you to make the right decisions for yourself and the people you love during your life and to leave a legacy of support and love to the people you care about most.
To do that, our initial meeting is a two-hour working session called a Family Wealth Planning Session. During this session, you’ll educate us on everything you own and all of your family dynamics, and we’ll educate you on how the law would apply to you, your assets, and your family on that day in the event of your incapacity or death. If the that-day scenario works for you, then you'll have assurance and confidence that your plan in aligned with your intentions.
If the that-day scenario leaves you concerned, then together we can create a plan for how to structure your affairs, how you’d like to have your family supported, and how to keep track of your assets so your family never feels lost, confused, or alone during a time of shock or grief.
In either case, by the end of our meeting, you may feel more clear than ever about how to make choices that create the legacy you desire to leave--as a parent, as a business owner or professional, and as the CEO of your life.
This Planning Session is $450. But we waive this fee if you are willing to do a bit of homework ahead of time. This homework is a critical part of the planning process and it will benefit your loved ones whether you engage in a full plan with us or not. The homework will guide you to find everything you own, document it, and create the most elemental aspect of any plan: a full personal inventory. Just completing this initial assessment will likely get you more financially organized than you've ever been before. Ask me about my grandmother's inventory (she had none) and how we had to wait for her mail every day after she died to get details on her accounts.
We are consistently surprised to see that many of our clients do not have a clear awareness of what they own or how to locate all of their assets. If you don’t know what you have and where it is and you haven’t documented it, how will your family know? This is exactly why there is more than $58 billion (yes, that’s billion with a “b”) of lost and unclaimed assets held by state and federal agencies in the U.S. This happens when you become incapacitated or die and your family is unable to find or simply overlooks assets you’ve worked so hard to create because most people fail to properly inventory their assets and/ or keep that inventory regularly updated. So we support you to start there.
We know you haven’t devoted years of your precious time and energy to build your family wealth only for your heirs to lose track of it when something happens to you. That’s one reason the Family Wealth Planning Session is so beneficial. Whether you decide to create a full estate plan or just rework the one you have, at the very least your family will know what you have and how to locate it should anything happen to you.
If you do decide to create an estate plan with us, the Family Wealth Planning Session will guide you to choose the type of plan you want based on your budget, what’s most important to you, what’s not important to you, and with a clear understanding of the impact of your choices. We can help you choose the most affordable and effective planning solution for your life and the people you love so you can get your affairs in order and keep them that way throughout your lifetime and all of life’s changes.
This investment of your time now will save your family countless hours of heartache and work down the road and can help your loved ones stay out of conflict and court. Death is unavoidable. But you can make it far easier on the people you love by the choices you make now. Facing the reality of this fact allows you to make choices that will let you enjoy your current life even more. In fact, our clients often report a huge sense of relief after meeting with us, and they frequently say they wished they’d created a life and legacy plan sooner.
Life & Legacy Planning
Estate planning is about far more than planning for your death and passing on your “estate” and assets to your loved ones—it’s about planning for a life you love and a legacy worth leaving by the choices you make today. In the end, your Life & Legacy Plan goes far beyond simply creating documents and then never seeing us again. We develop a relationship with you if that’s your wish.
This article is a service of Jennifer Winegardner of Rayboun Winegardner, PLLC. We do not just draft documents; we ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about life and death for yourself and the people you love. That's why we offer a Family Wealth Planning Session,™ during which you will get more financially organized than you’ve ever been before and make all the best choices for the people you love. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session.
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