What To Expect From Your Initial Meeting With Us, Your Personal Family Lawyer®
Meeting with your Personal Family Lawyer® is different from meeting with a traditional lawyer, whether you’ve met with an estate planning lawyer before or not. Here we will explain what’s involved with our process in hopes that it will inspire you to meet with us, your Personal Family Lawyer®, and benefit from this difference. We’ll help you gain a greater understanding of what your family needs you to have in place so that you don’t leave behind a mess if you become incapacitated or die.
Meeting With A Traditional Lawyer
A typical “initial consultation” with a typical estate planning attorney would be a meet-and-greet-type of appointment, in which the lawyer describes the various legal documents you need to put in place and quotes you a fee to provide those documents. With this method, it will likely be quite difficult for you to learn exactly what you need for your unique family situation, assets, and how to make the right decision. You may end up simply considering whether the cost of these documents fits within your budget. However, deciding what you need based solely on the cost will likely lead to you receiving a set of documents that won’t serve and protect your family or your assets when they need the most support.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen it all too often: You have the best of intentions to do the right thing and get a will or trust in place, but you either don’t do it, don’t complete it, or work with a lawyer who puts in place a documents-only plan that is little more than what you could do yourself online through an online document service. Afterwards when you become incapacitated or die your family is left with a mess: They don’t know where your assets are, they don’t know who to turn to, and your documents are out-of-date. Your loved ones are now lost, confused, and grieving all at once.
Family Wealth Planning Session™
To keep this scenario from being your family’s reality, we designed our process to support you as you make the right decisions for yourself and the people you love.
The first part of our process is our initial meeting with you, a two-hour working session called a Family Wealth Planning Session. During this session, you’ll educate us on everything you own and all of your family dynamics, and we’ll educate you on how the law would apply to you, your assets, and your family in the event of your incapacity or death. Then together we will create a plan for how to structure your affairs, how you’d like to have your family supported, and how to keep track of your assets so your family never feels lost, confused, or alone during a time of grief. By the time you leave the session, you’ll walk out with a clearer understanding than you’ve ever had about how to make life choices in alignment with the legacy you desire to leave as a parent, as a business owner or professional, and as the CEO of your life.
This Planning Session is $750, but we waive this fee if you are willing to do a bit of homework ahead of time. This homework is a critical part of the planning process, and it will benefit your loved ones whether you engage in a full plan with us or not. The homework will guide you to find everything you own and document it, using our Personal Resource Map: Family Wealth Inventory and Assessment. Just completing this initial assessment will likely get you more financially organized than you’ve ever been before.
We find that many of our clients do not have a clear awareness of what they own or how to locate all of their assets. If you don’t know what you have and where it is and you haven’t documented it, how will your family know? This is exactly why there is more than $58 billion of lost and unclaimed assets held by state and federal agencies in the U.S. This happens when you become incapacitated or die and your family is unable to find or simply overlooks assets you’ve worked so hard to create. With this you can see that most people fail to properly inventory their assets and/or keep that inventory regularly updated.
This investment of your time now will save your family countless hours of heartache and work down the road while also keeping your loved ones out of conflict and court. If you choose to work with us, you’ll get the peace of mind that comes with knowing you never have to make another financial or legal decision without our guidance again.
Your Personal Family Lawyer®
As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we are specially trained to educate, empower, and support you to make the right decisions for your life and for the people you love. Keep in mind that your plan will be designed to provide for your loved ones in the event of your death or incapacity, so we aren’t just here to serve you—we’re here to serve your entire family. If you’d like to learn more about this process or schedule your appointment, contact us today.
This article is a service of Levi Alexander, Personal Family Lawyer®. We do not just draft documents; we ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about life and death, for yourself and the people you love. That’s why we offer a Family Wealth Planning Session™, during which you will get more financially organized than you’ve ever been before and make all the best choices for the people you love. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session and mention this article to find out how to get this $750 session at no charge.
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