Your Estate (Large or Small) Is Worth the Human Interaction

Thursday, April 28, 2011

It Doesn’t Have To Cost A Lot

Today a gentleman called our office looking for a quote on a simple will. He had called various other offices in town, and he was feeling discouraged by the high prices they wanted to charge him. In fact, one firm quoted him a whopping $1600 for a simple will!

This man easily could have decided on one of several courses of action at that point: give up, realizing he was priced out of the peace of mind this type of planning can provide, or try to go at it himself with tools available from the Internet, stores, and untrained associates.

A Modern Trend: Going It Alone

People are turning to online and store-bought (or “canned”) estate planning tools (wills, powers of attorney, and even trusts) in higher numbers. To a large extent, these documents do a fair job of protecting a person’s assets. But there are several advantages of going through an attorney, even for the simplest estate planning processes.

The Human Obligation

It must first be understood that when you call an attorney’s office, you are calling a human being who has various interests, which include a desire to gain your business, an ethical obligation to advise you fully, and — hopefully — a personal motivation to do good by you. Admittedly, the attorney is not in business to feel good, but rather to make a living. I call this the human “obligation.”

Using an online service such as www.legalzoom.com will not provide you with the human element of motivation to get things right. Instead, those services rely on the knowledge you are able to gain in your late-night Google searches to piece together your estate plan. If you know exactly what you’re doing, then you will not have any trouble. But if you are doubtful, talk to a knowledgeable estate attorney’s office. They will have ideas that are personalized to your unique situation, and no computer can offer that.

The Human Interaction

Second, estate planning is a very “human” practice. As opposed to litigation or even family law, this is not a practice where paperwork and pleadings are passed from one side of the adversarial “v.” to the other (i.e. Smith v. Johnson), like a heated tennis match. Rather, estate planning is an intimate process where the client expresses her greatest hopes, dreams, and desires, and the attorney helps the client find ways to accomplish them.

Third, consulting with an attorney can help you accomplish goals that are creative and altruistic. Alan Augulis, estate planning attorney, recently published an online article called “The Human Side Of Estate Planning”. His ideas are instructive and thought-provoking:

“Protecting and then maximizing the assets that you intend to pass along to your loved ones certainly is important, but your worth as a human being cannot measured on a spreadsheet.

“And by the same token, that worth cannot be imparted to the people that you love in a purely financial manner. Yet, once you are gone you are gone and you will no longer be there to provide your family members with one-on-one guidance or leadership by example.

“Until they perfect that cryogenics thing there is not much any of us can do about our mortality, but you can plan your estate in a creative manner that has instructive value. One tool that you can use that can potentially help to paint a picture worth a thousand words is the incentive trust.

“When you create an incentive trust you name a beneficiary as you would with any trust, but you attach stipulations that must be met before distributions from the trust are made. These vehicles are often used to guide a younger heir toward education, or to lure a loved one away from destructive behavior. But incentive trusts could be used for another purpose as well.

“You could choose to require a loved one to complete some form of community service as a stipulation of the trust. If you were to carefully choose the specific service in an effort to expose this family member to one of life’s realities that they may not otherwise experience it could have a profound positive impact on this person at a very deep level.

“In the end, your beneficiary may well gain a layer of depth of character to match the added financial security that you have provided. Such an approach may not on the surface seem to be universally necessary or appropriate. But you would be hard pressed to find a single individual who could not benefit from an experience of giving that lied outside of his or her comfort zone.”

Adapted from http://augulislawfir … ide-estate-planning/

It’s Worth Your Time

I am glad that gentleman called our office today. I quoted him a much lower figure for a simple will and powers of attorney for health care and asset management. It became clear to me right away that this man had limited means, but he wants to protect his precious, simple assets and make sure they end up in the right hands. And he didn’t want a lot of complication or expense.

If you want a human being to help you plan your estate to accomplish your deepest hopes and desires, then please call Farrell, Fraulob & Brown at (916) 442-5835.

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