PROFESSIONAL ADVISORS

Do you work as an advisor to our clientele?

If you work as an advisor to our clientele, we’d love to partner with you. Around 75% of adults don’t have an estate plan in place, and sometimes it’s advisors like you who can change that for your cliets. Not only that, but of the people who do have an estate plan, around 70% of those estate plans will fail. Yes, even the ones created by lawyers. Why? Because estate plans aren’t meant to be done once and then forgotten about forever, and most lawyers don’t have a plan to ensure their clients’ estate plans are staying up to date.

Since the beginning of my practice in 2008, I knew I needed to do things differently from other estate planning lawyers. I’ve always charged flat fees that included all communication about estate planning, so that clients know they can contact me with any questions and not worry about getting a bill in the mail. I’ve always offered a free plan review every three years for my clients, so we can make sure their plan is always up to date with their lives, and so their plan works when it’s needed.

But it turns out that clients aren’t as excited about these offerings as I thought they would be. Apparently, normal people don’t think about death, aging, incapacity, financial planning, tax planning, asset protection, and estate planning as much as those of us who do this for a living do. Although there are exceptions, they generally don’t just remember to call me when they open a new account or acquire a new asset that may impact their planning. They don’t just set up their review meetings unprompted. So I’ve had to adapt as I’ve learned how clients think. These topics are unpleasant for them, and they feel a lot of relief when they finish the estate planning process with me. They don’t want to think about it again, and they won’t unless something happens that triggers their fear and anxiety about these topics again.

Since I figured this all out, I’ve worked hard to implement systems that put it on us to get the clients in for their review meetings. We make things easy for our clients with our shared portal system and offerings of meetings by phone, video, or in person. We go over their plan with them; discuss any changes needed to fiduciaries or beneficiaries; discuss any big life changes that may impact their planning; review asset types, values, and titling; and identify any possible issues that need addressing. We then make a plan to follow up to make any changes that need to be made and ensure everything on the to-do list gets done.

Most lawyers aren’t doing this. Of course, there are lawyers who just crank out documents like they’re puppies at a puppy mill, offering low prices because they do high-volume unpersonalized work, not much more than an online service. But even experienced estate planning lawyers are moving from one client to the next as their business model. Most experienced estate planning lawyers do a good enough job creating estate plans for their clients. But if those plans aren’t updated over the years, they’re essentially useless by the time they’re needed.

It’s why I see the same posts on the listerve every day:

“Searching for the will of [so-and-so]. The family remembers they met with a lawyer 30 years ago, but no one can find the documents or remember the lawyer’s name.”

“Help. The decedent’s estate plan was not updated since 1998, and the situation is a mess. Is there a way to fix this so these folks don't end up on Jerry Springer?”

I guess you could say I made it my goal that none of my clients ever end up on the listserve.