August 9, 2010
How to Prepare for your Initial Estate Planning Meeting
One of the more common comments I hear as to why clients have procrastinated calling an attorney to assist them with estate planning is that they were concerned that they had to do too much preparing for the meeting. There really isn’t much you have to do, especially when you work with our Firm.
When you make an appointment with our Firm, you will be sent 3 documents to review prior to the meeting.
1. Welcome Letter:
This is primarily to familiarize you with our office policies and procedures and to also discuss the basic estate planning strategies. It gives you a basic discussion of the end result of a Last Will and Testament based plan versus a Revocable Living Trust based plan.
2. Family Information Worksheet:
This is for the client to complete and bring to our meeting. It asks for names, addresses, contact information, birth dates, childrens’ names, etc.; typical personal information.
3 Asset Worksheet:
This is also to be completed by the client and brought to our initial meeting. It is broken down by type of asset so that you can list your assets, how they are owned, the value and beneficiary names.
Having these 3 documents reviewed and or prepared prior to the meeting has three purposes:
1. It forces you to gather your assets and know what they are. Far too many have assets and don’t even know their value, who owns it or even if they are in existence anymore…especially when it comes to Life Insurance policies and 401Ks. This isn’t helpful at all.
2. It allows us to spend more time together discussing the actual plan and how it will help you and your family. Having to collect this information at our initial meeting could take 30 to 45 minutes or longer. Compare it to the endless forms you have to complete while waiting to be seen at your doctor’s office. You won’t have time to fill out forms at your scheduled appointment time with me because you will never have to wait long enough for me to fill out the forms!
3. It gets your mind focused for the discussion you will be having about your death, your children’s caregivers when you pass, estate taxes, etc. You will think of questions that you didn’t even realize you needed to be thinking about.
There is little preparation, but it goes a long way!
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