If you are ready to get your affairs in order, you may be wondering what you should look for in an estate planning attorney. Here are a few tips to help guide your search for an experienced lawyer in your community.
4 Clues to Finding the Right Attorney for Your Estate Plan
- Find a lawyer with substantial experience in the practice of estate planning. Not all lawyers practice estate planning and not all estate planners are lawyers. Be sure to look for a lawyer with estate planning as his or her primary area of practice. Search for a law firm with substantial experience with Wills and trusts, conveyance instruments (for example, real property deeds and documents of title), transfer of business interests, federal and state taxation, probate practice in your state, and so on. If you know that your estate plan will involve special concerns (a child requiring a special needs trust, for instance), then be sure to ask if the attorney has experience planning for similar circumstances with previous clients.
- Find out how much the lawyer charges for legal services. Before you decide to hire the estate planning attorney, ask what he or she charges for various services. Some law firms have a schedule of flat fees for specific instruments, such as a simple last will or Durable Power of Attorney. But they may charge an hourly rate for more complicated documents, such as a Living Trust (or inter vivos trust). Also, if you need to spread the cost of services out over time, find out if the attorney has an installment payment plan that allows you to get the estate documents you desire while budgeting the expense more comfortably.
- Ask if the estate planning attorney will assist in transferring the assets into the Living Trust. If your estate plan is to include a living trust, determine whether the attorney will assist in properly transferring items into the trust as intended. Creating a trust is one thing, transferring assets into the trust is quite another. For a trust to function as intended, property and assets must be titled over into the name of the trust. In other words, the assets become the trust (sometimes called the trust principal or trust corpus). Not everyone is sophisticated enough to handle these transfers and conveyances without assistance. Mistakes are easily made and the consequences can be costly, on many levels. Consider by way of example only, the trust that was supposed to include the settlor's primary residence. But the deed conveying the property to the trust was not properly executed, contained the wrong legal description, or was lost and never recorded as required by law. If the trust never took title to the primary residence, then the trust terms have no legal effect on that property.
- Find an attorney whom you trust, someone you can communicate with about very personal matters. Planning your estate involves a realistic analysis of the people in close relationships with you. Your spouse, children, parents, aunts, and uncles, cousins, co-owners, friends. They all have unique personalities, varying competencies, and idiosyncrasies. You will have to make some tough decisions, in part, based upon what you know about the people who are most important to you. For example, maybe an adult child tends to drink too much, your spouse is a poor money manager (or you're divorced), and your neighbor the CPA is the first choice for the personal representative. Frank discussions about family, along with your asset picture, will need to be engaged with your attorney as you work through all estate options. Communications with your lawyer are confidential and privileged, but you need to feel comfortable talking about things that are sometimes distressing or embarrassing. If unable to communicate freely about your circumstances with a particular lawyer, you may want to continue your search.
Brian Winter is an estate planning and family law attorney in Phoenix, Arizona. Mr. Winter is a partner with Stewart Law Group with offices throughout Arizona. The firm has helped many clients navigate the legal complexities of estate planning, wills, probate, divorce, child custody, spousal support, property division and parental visitation
