Updating your estate plan
Updating your estate plan if you have an existing estate plan
If you already have a will, trust, or an entire estate plan, you’re in better shape than many people. However, not all plans are equal. Many estate plans out there, even some from reputable law firms, are very limited “one size fits all” templates that cannot be customized to fit your specific needs. Many have significant problems and errors. Clients often don’t realize their old plan doesn’t fit well because it was never properly explained to them. Having a thorough, detailed plan is important and will give you peace of mind that your loved ones will be cared for as you intended when you pass away.
Does your estate plan measure up?
One indicator of an estate plan’s quality is its length. A proper, comprehensive estate plan should be a thick, heavy collection of documents no less than 100 pages in length at a minimum. A quality trust alone should be at least 40-50 pages in length. If your estate plan doesn’t fit that simple description, it probably doesn’t cover everything it should.
We invite you to bring your existing documents to our office for a free review. We’ll explain what a good plan entails and go through your documents with you to identify and discuss its strengths and potential areas of improvement.
When should estate plans be updated?
Estate plans are written with the future in mind, but even the best plans need occasional updates to account for any life changes. If any of the life events below apply to you, we recommend scheduling an appointment to update your plan.
- Your plan is more than five years old
- Marriage or divorce
- Birth or adoption of a child
- A beneficiary or heir has died
- Significant changes to finances
- Moving to or from another state
- Your spouse is incapacitated or you fear that may become so
- Retirement
- Purchasing real property since creating your plan
- Changes in business interests
- Changes in beneficiaries, including disinheriting someone or changing the amount or manner of an inheritance
- Someone named to a position of power in your will or trust is no longer an appropriate choice (i.e. death, incapacity, moved, criminal conviction, retirement, deterioration of their personal finances, relationship deteriorated, etc.)
Consultation for Probate and Estate Settlement
If you’re meeting with us because you’ve recently lost a loved one, we are here to help alleviate your stress so that you can focus on your family. When you contact us, we’ll schedule an appointment for your initial consultation and email you a questionnaire to complete. You’ll answer questions about yourself, your family member, his or her assets and liabilities, and other “interested persons”. You can either return the questionnaire before your consultation or bring it with you to your appointment.
At your consultation, we’ll discuss how probate or trust administration works, your specific situation and challenges, costs, and answer all your questions. From this meeting, we often have enough information to successfully open probate within a few days.
After probate is opened, we will manage the entire process and make it as easy as possible for you. Typically, a second meeting is set up to sign the documents and on occasion, clients come a third time to pick up the documents once they are accepted by the court.
