NEWSFLASH: John O'Reilly is running for Carlsbad City Treasurer. Please check his campaign web site, www.oreillyfortreasurer2010.com. Now on to our topic...
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What Do You Need to Know about Estate Planning?
(In this month's newsletter, be sure to read the Common Mistakes section.)
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Don't try to achieve your own technical competence in estate planning. An excellent estate planning attorney will educate you as needed.
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Therefore the key is selecting an attorney/firm that is:
- technically competent
- has processes in place to assure high quality and accuracy
- is client-service centric and
- is collaborative - wants to team up with the other experts on your team.
Who needs an estate plan?
The brief answer, all adults need at least parts of an estate plan. Everyone should have a Will and Health Care Directive, for example.
All you need to know:
1) Choose an excellent attorney.
2) See them often enough.
3) Avoid the common mistakes, which leads us to.....
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Common Mistakes
Typically mistakes can be traced to choosing a poor quality firm and not seeing them often enough.
1)Shopping Attorneys. Don't choose based on price - "you get what you pay for" saying is in play here. You don't want your loved ones dealing with the additional trauma of a poorly designed and written estate plan.
2)Not Keeping Up. Laws and family situations change - estate plans need to keep up. Your advisor and/or estate planning attorney should have processes in place that assure adequate periodic review. Reviews should be triggered more often with changing laws and situations.
3)Lack of a Team Approach. Make sure that your financial advisor, CPA and estate attorney know each other and have worked together as a team. A very good financial advisor will accompany you to at least your first meeting with the estate planning attorney.
4) Beware the Estate Planning Attorney that was recommended by another professional because of a referral sharing relationship. It's a possible conflict of interest even if no money is being exchanged. A referral sharing relationship could cause a poor quality attorney to be referred to you. You can directly ask the referrer if there is a referral relationship in place or ask them to produce their vetting process that resulted in them choosing this attorney.
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What to Do Next
How to choose an estate planning attorney: Get referrals from people you trust,
and meet with the firms whose names come up more than once. in the meeting ask them questions that assess competence and fit. (The person providing
the referral may not be aware their work was sub-par, so be careful.)
Otherwise, your financial advisor, if one of the rare advisors that have a thorough vetting process in place, may have at least one excellent option.
We suggest that you get an initial financial plan done first because it forces you to get your financial documents organized which the estate planning attorney will demand. But don't let the financial plan be an obstacle to getting an estate plan, or visa versa, both are critical.
For any successful journey, you need a compelling vision and that should be the OVERALL FIRST STEP.
Because that visioning process is such a critical first step, we scoured the world for the best such process. We chose the visioning tool Financial Road Map for Living Your life on
Purpose. We facilitate Road Maps for individuals/couple as a free service, even knowing in advance that you are not a fit to our services. Contact us to schedule a Road Map meeting. We can also provide a brief 20-30 minute Road Map demo on the phone.
You may wish to read articles about how to choose an advisor. Be sure to understand their fees. Call us. We have a book we can share with you that includes advice on how to find a good advisor, what to ask, how to interview. |
