Working with Professional Advisors
as Part of the Estate Planning Team

     We cannot adequately express our heartfelt gratitude to the many financial planners, insurance agents and CPA’s who have entrusted us with the noble goal of providing estate planning services for their clients. We truly understand that an advisor’s recommendation of our firm carries a risk that this recommendation will reflect upon the advisor who referred us their client. Your referral represents a sacred trust that you have placed in us, and we seek to always not just meet but rather exceed your expectations.

     As an estate planning law firm, we work very closely with other professional advisors including Certified Financial Planner™ professionals, Investment Advisors, Financial Consultants, Insurance Professionals, Certified Public Accountants and Tax Advisors as well as other attorneys who seek our experience and expertise. We believe that a team based approached will provide our clients with the most sophisticated, comprehensive and effective estate planning possible. Toward that end, we always encourage our clients to invite their professional advisors into the estate planning process. This way, if more insurance is needed, your financial planner can move forward with that updated information and your CPA will know about any trusts, business entities or other structures that we put into effect for future tax reporting requirements.

The Process

     When you have a client that needs our services, we ask that you  to set an initial consultation. Our staff will assist you in scheduling the appointment. We ask that you please not call our attorneys prior to the initial consultation since there is no place for our attorneys to record the information until you meet. By saving your questions until the meeting, our attorneys can better serve your clients once they can fully see all of the issues unique to your client’s situation. It is best to set the appointment while you are meeting with the client so that everyone can check their calendars at the same time and you won’t have to go back and forth between your calendar and your client’s. Many advisors don’t realize that our attorneys are in 15 – 20 meetings a week. By saving your questions for the meeting and setting the meeting while you are with your client, we can better utilize everyone’s time. Please keep in mind that we seek to develop a long term relationship with our clients and their advisors and do not wish to get involved with someone who is merely shopping.

     We ask our professional advisors to please prepare their clients for their initial consultation. Prior to our meeting, we encourage advisors to prepare the client for the meeting by making sure that the client has completed our client questionnaire. Additionally, if your client needs basic estate planning for example, have them consider the appointment of guardians for any minor children of the client, discuss trustees to manage the wealth in case the client died before the beneficiaries were ready to handle their inheritance, and understand, generally, the cost associated with the planning process. While we ask our professional advisors to not quote fees on our behalf, you should make sure that your clients understand that the legal fees to implement their basic documents, including a Will, Living Will and Power of Attorney, will typically range between $800 and $4,000 depending upon whether there are testamentary trusts involved, whether tax planning is necessary, whether we’re attempting to accomplish generation skipping transfer planning, and the overall complexity of the base documents.

     At the conclusion of our initial meeting (which typically lasts an hour to an hour and a half), our attorneys can often quote a flat fee for the design, drafting and implementation of the initial estate planning documents. Your clients then may choose to engage our firm by signing an engagement letter and making a 50% deposit with the balance being due when the documents are signed. Our flat fee includes any time spent during the initial consultation. If, on the other hand, the client decides not to move forward, then we will not charge for the initial consultation.

     The second step will involve the review and signing of the base documents. We typically will establish a second meeting two to three weeks after the initial consultation, and that meeting is set at the conclusion of the initial consultation. Our practice is to not submit drafts of the documents prior to the follow-up meeting because, in our experience, this merely confuses the clients due to the technical nature of the documents. Please feel secure knowing that our attorneys will thoroughly explain the planning documents to your clients at the follow-up meeting.

     Once the base planning documents are done, we can then explore whether the client needs to do any further advanced planning including estate tax minimization strategies, irrevocable life insurance trusts, special needs trusts, charitable planning, family limited partnerships, Captive Insurance Companies, buy/sell agreements and similar planning to more fully implement the client’s planning objectives. We will also add your clients to our email newsletter distribution to help keep them informed of changes that may affect their planning. We also recommend that our clients meet with us thereafter every one to three years depending upon the complexity of their affairs.

Resources

     Please visit our Client Resource Center for a library of our presentations relating to estate planning which may be suitable as handouts for your clients. Further, please be aware that we are always happy to speak to groups of your existing or prospective clients on various estate planning issues including basic estate planning, buy/sell planning, charitable gifting strategies, and other advanced topics that may be of interest to you and your clients. Please call our office if you would like for one of our attorneys to join you in making a presentation involving various estate and business planning topics.