Why Work With Us
Before Hiring an Estate Planning Lawyer, Understand the Difference
How We Differ From Other Estate Planning Lawyers
- Flat Fees: All of our fees are fixed fees agreed to in advance, so there are no surprises. At our initial meeting you will choose the level of planning and fee that works best for your family, so there will never be any surprises.
- Beyond the Legal Documents: We keep you informed and make sure your plan works. We don’t just prepare a set of legal documents for you and send you on your way. We make sure your assets are owned in the right way, we make sure your kids’ well-being is properly planned for, we ensure everyone you’ve named in your plan knows what to do if anything happens to you.
- Plan Reviews; We review your plan at least every three years and annually through our FamilyCare Program. We foster a lifetime, ongoing relationship with our clients. Throughout your life, things change. You change; your assets change; your family changes; the law will definitely change. When planning with us, your plan will keep up with those changes.
- Your Team: We have a whole team in place to answer your quick questions and to make the planning process incredibly easy and painless for you and your family. Our process helps you make sure that your assets are titled in the right way, both now and over your lifetime.
- Organization: We help you get your legal and financial house in order. We show how you can make smarter choices about things like buying insurance, saving for college, and retirement planning so you never spend more than you have to or get taken advantage of by unscrupulous salespeople.
- Your Personal Family Lawyer: We’ve been specifically trained as a Personal Family Lawyer® to plan for your life and death, and to ensure that if you have minor children, they are never raised by anyone you wouldn’t want or taken into the care of strangers. If your children are adults, we help you weave them into your estate plan with care and forethought that most other lawyers simply do not have the training to do.
- Legacy Planning. We believe that planning is about much more than just the transfer of your financial wealth. With all of our plans, we include a process to help you transfer your most important personal wealth to your loved ones, including your intellectual, spiritual and human assets - who you are and what’s important to you.
Consequences When Other Attorneys Don't Listen
When lawyers do not take the time to listen and consider a family’s personal circumstances, the result is that your Will and Trust Documents do not end up reflecting what your family really wants to happen. Usually there is no review or updating, so the plan quickly becomes outdated and does not work when your family needs it most.
So even though you may pay less up front to get a standard set of documents (or even documents that are customized for your family), things end up much more expensive in the long run. Plus, you leave your family at risk of having to deal with an expensive, unnecessary court process during a time of tremendous grief.
