Our Process

ESTATE PLANNING AND BUSINESS SUCCESSION PLANNING

Legal documents can be complicated. We realize that no one voluntarily picks up a will or a trust to read with their morning coffee and that is okay. That’s why we’re here! Our estate and business planning process consists of the following four steps:

Consult

At your Initial Consultation your attorney will ask you a lot of questions about your family and/or business. We will want to hear all about your kids and where you’d like them to end up. We’ll ask about your business goals and business partners. We will even want to know about your cabin up north, your family farm, or the tiny 2 bedroom you’ve lived in since you got married. We then use your answers to come up with a set of options that best meet your goals and expectations. Finally, together, we decide on a plan that results in the peace of mind you are looking for.

Design

The Design process begins with a letter that we will send within one week of your Initial Consultation. The letter will recap our initial meeting, as well as summarize your new documents. After you’ve reviewed your documents we will schedule a Design meeting where we will address all of the specifics pertaining to your plan. This meeting typically lasts about 2 hours. We take the time to break down these complex documents into simple, easy-to-understand sections. You will obtain peace of mind by knowing exactly how your plan will work before you leave this meeting.

Sign

The third step in our Holistic Approach is to hold a Signing Ceremony and Funding Meeting. You can expect to spend approximately 20 minutes signing your documents, and an additional 40 minutes in a funding discussion with a paralegal. The purpose of this discussion is to illustrate which of your assets have been transferred to your estate plan, and what, if any, additional steps need to be taken. After your meeting is complete, we will scan all of your documents so that they may be kept safely within our Virtual Vault, allowing you to access them online at any time. You may take the originals home with you. You will leave this meeting with a well thought-out, comprehensive estate plan that meets all of your current goals.

Maintain

At some firms, the day you pick up your final documents is the last day you see or hear from your attorney. Our estate and business planning attorneys, however, realize that things can change. Families change, names change, even laws change. Our goal is for you to leave our office with peace of mind. That means we don’t want you to worry about what might happen in the future. Therefore, we strongly encourage all of our clients to enroll in our Annual Maintenance Program. Designed specifically for upkeep and review, this program allows our clients to feel secure about the future of their documents. Key features of this program include: 24/7 online access to all of your estate planning and healthcare documents (including a special physician’s module for hospitals), an annual summary and review of your plan by an attorney, and discounted or free-of-charge edits to your documents.