Our Process for Settling Your Estate Plan
Step 1: Schedule a Complimentary Consultation
Contact us to set up a complimentary consultation about possible estate planning needs. Our video and telephone consultations are as long as is necessary to answer your questions.
There is no charge and no obligation for a complimentary consultation. You may inquire without concern about being pursued after the fact.
Step 2: Gather Existing Documents / Fill Out Our Organizer
Prior to your consultation, if you have an existing trust or estate plan, please get your existing documents to us via email or otherwise. As well, filling out our Estate Planning Organizer is a big help in determining your estate planning needs.
The Estate Planning Organizers can be downloaded here: Individual Married Couple
Step 3: Consult Before We Begin Work
If you are ready to proceed with estate planning, we will set a follow-up consultation to go over final issues before beginning work on your estate planning documents. This is to assure that your directions are clear, well thought out, and communicated. Sometimes, talking through issues helps with decisions.
Where you choose to employ us, one-half of the agreed fee is due at the inception of our work. The second half of the fee is due on the earlier of (1) finalization of the estate plan or update, or (2) 20 calendar days from the presentation of the initial draft of the estate plan.
Step 4: Drafting the Estate Plan
It takes us about seven to ten days to do the initial draft of the estate plan. We will send the initial draft to you and set a video or in-person conference to go over the initial draft.
Step 5: Conference to Go Over Draft and Revisions
We will have a video or in-person conference to go over the draft and any revisions that you wish to have made. This will help you focus on what is most important in your plan. Sometimes, we do several conferences as you may have requests for additional revisions throughout the process. There are no extra fees for additional conferences or revisions in the process of settling your estate plan. We are committed to making sure your estate plan is exactly as you wish.
Step 6: Finalization, Signing and Delivery
Once the content of the estate plan is finalized to your satisfaction, we will set a signing as certain documents need to be notarized and others need to be "witnessed." We will either set a meeting to do the signing with your notary of choice, or, if you are remote to us, we will send you the documents for signing with instructions. Lisa Zinnanti is a notary and handles most signings at a fixed rate for our clients.
Once the documents are signed, notarized and witnessed, the documents come back into our possession for scanning, binding and tabbing.
As part of our service to you, we send any deeds to the respective county recorder to transfer title of your real property to the trust. We are also available to assist with re-titling accounts and designate beneficiaries.
Once we have processed the final documents, you will be sent the original hard-copy documents in a well-organized binder. We retain an electronic scan of your estate plan which you may retrieve at any time for no cost should your original documents become lost or destroyed.
You have one year from the date of our delivery of the binder to make changes free of charge. Further, we are always around for any follow up questions you may have.