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Afterwards, you might remember your lawyer said something about moving your bank accounts into the trust she created for you. You’ll go to the bank, forget what you were supposed to do, call your lawyer’s office, get a voicemail, have to leave the bank and wait for a call back, and by that time, you’ll have gotten busy with other things and never get around to moving that bank account. A few weeks later, you’ll get a bill in the mail for $67.50 for 15 minutes of your lawyer’s time for answering a couple of questions. You’ll make a mental note – don’t call the lawyer ever again.

Several years later, you’ll refinance your house or sell it and buy a new one, and forget you were supposed to let your lawyer know or make sure you kept the title in the name of the trust. Your children will get older, making your guardianship choices outdated, but you don’t want to call your lawyer because you know you’ll get a bill in the mail two weeks later. You’ll hear something about a change in the tax law, but you figure you’d surely get a letter in the mail from your lawyer if it was something that affected you, so you don’t worry about it. Plus, you’d have to dig through boxes to find your trust documents so you could remember your lawyer’s name and find her contact information. Who has time for that?

It’s not until you become incapacitated or die, and your family finds the binder you dropped in a drawer years before and never looked at again, that they’ll realize your plan is so outdated that it has nothing to do with your current life, your assets, and current law. Your family is at a loss. They don’t know where to turn or what to do, so they contact the same lawyer you used to prepare the documents, who is as happy as can be to probate your assets, which never made it in to the trust (and collect the fees for doing so).

How do I know all this? I've seen it happen exactly like this too many times to count.  Unfortunately, I discovered the majority of the estate planning industry wasn't designed to serve growing families who experience lots of change on their way to success. It was primarily designed to serve 70 and 80-year-olds preparing for death by creating a plan that looks back over a lifetime, anticipating no change of circumstances. Other aspects of the industry, such as online form preparation companies, are completely impersonal, incomplete, don't adequately deal with state-specific law requirements, and most will be inadequate to keep your loved ones out of the courts’ probate process after you die. Your family is worth the investment to make sure you've planned in a personal and effective way!

What makes my firm different is that we're not just here to create a set of documents you'll likely never update or look at again.  We're here to form a lifelong relationship, keeping your plan updated throughout all of life’s changes, and ensuring your loved ones have someone to turn to when you're no longer here. We also want to support you in planning both your legacy (what you leave behind when you're gone) and your life as well.

We understand you're BUSY, growing and creating a life you love. We understand you desire a life of prosperity and you value ease, convenience, and efficiency. You want to know you’ve made the best decisions for your family during your lifetime, and that your family will be left with ease and aware of your love by how well you prepared. You want to make sure your children would be taken care of in the best way possible and will be properly prepared to receive your wealth, when it's time. That’s our focus too.

As your Personal Family Lawyer, I'll provide you with the guidance you need to build and maintain a life of prosperity and leave a legacy of Family Wealth. Family Wealth is so much more than financial wealth. It really encompasses everything you care about even more than money: your values, insights, stories, experience — your intellectual, spiritual, and human assets. As part of our planning process, we guide you to consider and plan for those most often lost assets to ensure your family retains these priceless assets for generations.  While I can’t go into all the details here, we'll cover them at your Family Wealth Planning Session – which you can schedule online here.

To accomplish these goals, I encourage open and ongoing communication with our clients. In fact, we’ve thrown out the time clock so you never have to be afraid to call with a quick question (or even a not-so-quick question). Everything we do is billed on a flat-fee basis and agreed to in advance, so there are never any surprises. We'll discuss the package options in more detail at your Family Wealth Planning Session. In almost all cases, we're able to save our clients several multiples of the cost of our package in future legal fees associated with probate, poor planning, estate taxes, and lost assets.

Finally, we ensure the most important details of your planning are followed through and help you make sure your plan continues to work throughout your lifetime. In fact, follow up and keeping your plan current is so critically important that I've created an affordable and unique membership program to keep your plan up-to-date, year-in and year-out. Our membership program helps us deliver exceptional results for our clients. You can rest assured we'll be here for the life and legacy of your family.

I look forward to seeing you and caring for your family soon!

Kristy