Estate Planning In Michigan

Archive for August 5th, 2008

Funding Your Living Trust

At our firm, estate planning is more than just preparing documents. Estate planning is about providing expertise and counseling from the beginning of our client engagement through the funding of the trust, if a trust based estate plan is used.

The Cost of Michigan Estate Planning Part II

The other day after paying $4+ dollars for gas I was surfing the internet pricing out a new hyrbid car. Not that I am buying a car right now, but I was fed up with the price of gas. Well, I like leather seats in my car. So I was also looking at the price of upgrading from a standard package to a package that included leather seats. Around this same time I had a potential client balk at the price of an estate planning package that would meet all of their goals and protect their children.

Then it struck me, to upgrade from a cloth package to a leather package in a car was actually less than an estate plan for this family that would protect their children from creditors, predators, bankruptcy, the children themselves while also putting the affairs of the parents in order, avoiding the 3%-5% cost of probate, and many other benefits. All for less cost then the 7 years you will be driving a new car to experience leather seats. Mind boggling when you think about it.

It’s odd what people value and what people say they value.

Price of Estate Planning in Michigan Part I

As a Michigan estate planning lawyer, occasionally I will meet with a potential client in need of estate planning who is very sensitive to price. Prior to meeting with them and finding out their goals and the complexity of what they want to accomplish, I have no idea what the price of a comprehensive estate plan will be. Estate planning for me and my firm is not a “one-sized fits all” proposition. Each family, individual and business is different so each estate plan is also different.

Everyone says they just want a simple will, or simple plan, but they don’t understand the hidden traps, or complexities that need to be overcome to meet their goals.

What are you paying for by preparing an estate plan, especially when you use a lawyer who’s main focus is estate planning? Is it the documents? No, because you can download or by forms off the internet for less then $50. Better yet, and this was new to me, use someone else’s trust document and just change the names.

What you are paying for is a) the expertise b) the counseling c) the documents d) peace of mind that your planning has been done right. That peace of mind that it’s been done right is elusive and difficult to show value of.

The best way to demonstrate it is to look at examples where it has not been done right. I will take a real world. Just recently there was an error in a family’s estate plan that cost a special needs child nearly $800,000. The way the documents read is that this special needs child had a trust that was only funded with $34, when most likely the trust was supposed to be funded with $800,000 of the deceased’s estate. That is an expensive mistake for a family. That one example of the price you can put on peace of mind, not only for you but also your loved ones. That is who this planning is for. I feel comfortable saying that to set up an estate plan ahead of time would have been much cheaper then the $800,000 cost to this decedent.