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Why Do You Need It?

• Estate Planning – So their story doesn’t stop because yours did
• Estate Planning – So your loved ones aren’t forced to make impossible choices
• Estate Planning – Because you love them
• Estate Planning – So that their dreams can still come true
• Estate Planning – To name the guardians of your children in the event of your early death
• Estate Planning – To protect adult beneficiaries from bad decisions, outside influences, creditor problems, and divorcing spouses
• Estate Planning – So they don’t have to make critical decisions when they are “emotionally compromised”
• Estate Planning – So that whatever you have – whether little or much, is preserved for your family
• Estate Planning – So your values are documented, preserved, and passed on to future generations; it is said that you live as long as someone remembers you.
• Estate planning – Minimizes the chances of family strife and ugly legal battles
• Estate Planning – To avoid the costs, delays and publicity of probate
• Estate Planning – To prepare your family for the wealth they’ll receive
• Estate Planning – So you leave a legacy of peace instead of a legacy of chaos

You have a choice as to how you will be remembered by those you leave behind – choose to be the protector and preserver of your legacy.

Now that you’ve decided you need to do an Estate Plan how do you choose how to implement it?

Estate planning is a very intimate personal activity. It is not and should not be a cookie cutter process. Your situation is unique.  No one is like you.  No one has your family, and no one knows your family better than you do. So what’s next?  Spend thousands of dollars with an estate planning attorney or spend a fraction of that and put the power of IEDS.online’s Ultimate Estate Planning Document System to work for you.

You don’t need an attorney to do your own Estate Planning Documents!

We’ve all seen the fear mongering articles usually written by estate planning lawyers or their friends in the mainstream money rags magazines that equate doing your own estate planning documents with doing your own oral surgery or disarming a ticking time bomb.

To be fair, you should not undertake any project you’ve never done before without a commitment to invest time and money to acquire the information and tools to do the job correctly. 

And, until recently, the technology was not available to empower individuals to confidently prepare anything beyond a basic cut and paste simple “I Love You Will,” where each spouse left their separate property to the survivor and then to their children.   Yes, form books were available, but they required a significant knowledge of specific state law and its application to the individual fact pattern in order to be used with confidence.  Essentially, it required the use of legal judgment.

However, just as preparation of one’s own income tax return has evolved from pouring over hundreds of pages of instruction forms and schedules, pencils with big erasers handy and an adding machine to the simplicity of TurboTax®, TaxAct® or H&R Block®, so too has estate planning document drafting. 

The Ultimate Estate Planning Document System utilizes the same document assembly software used by over a thousand estate planning attorneys in their own offices.  The system is State specific and constantly updated to keep up with changes in State and Federal law.  Just like today’s tax preparation software systems, the Ultimate Estate Planning Document System uses an online questionnaire that is dynamic, responsive to client questions, and loaded with detailed help at each stage of the interview process.

Getting Custom Estate Planning Documents Doesn’t Have to Cost Thousands of Dollars to be Done Right

Typical costs of having an estate planning attorney evaluate your financial and family circumstances and prepare the appropriate legal documents for a couple typically range between $2,500 to $10,000 or more depending on complexity, location and other circumstances.  Many estate planning attorneys will work on a fixed fee basis and most will provide a written fee agreement which will detail the services and documents that will be provided.  The fee agreement should also explain what is not covered and disclose any other fees or expenses you might have to pay.

But beware!  Most lawyers have only one thing to sell, their time! Even though I said many estate planning attorneys will work on a fixed fee basis, when we looked at the actual numbers, we were a bit surprised.

A 2017 study of lawyer billing practices showed that despite growing discussions on flat fees and other value-based billing structures, the billable hour remains the most common method for tracking work and billing clients.  The top 10 average rates by city were:

• New York City $344
• Los Angeles $324
• Chicago $312
• Miami $310
• Washington DC $304
• Dallas $300
• Atlanta $293
• Boston $278
• Houston $276
• Philadelphia $245

Here is a breakdown of individual lawyer rates by practice area:

• Immigration $340
• Intellectual Property $318
• Tax $308
• Real Estate $304
• Trusts $301
• Insurance $186
• Mediation and Arbitration $162
• Workers’ Compensation $150
• Medical Malpractice $149
• Juvenile $86

Finally, here are the practice areas in which respondents said they use flat fees:

•            
• Traffic (90 percent)
• Immigration (72 percent)
• Criminal (59 percent)
• Elder Law (30 percent)
• Bankruptcy (29 percent)
• Wills and Estates (25 percent)

I’d like to share a short story with you.  I was talking with a mortgage broker recently who told me that she and her husband recently visited an estate planning attorney to get their documents prepared.  This was not their first meeting.  An engagement letter had been prepared by the lawyer and signed by this lady and her husband. 

During the meeting, my friend asked a number of questions.  The couple’s situation, while not extremely complex, it didn’t call for simple reciprocal wills and then a bequest to their joint children.  She asked a few more questions and then wanted clarification on the answers the attorney gave.  At that point the lawyer stood up and announced that he didn’t think he was the right lawyer for them.  My friend asked another question.  “Why would you say that?”  To which the lawyer answered.  “YOU ASK TOO MANY QUESTIONS!!” 

The truth is that when it comes to planning your estate, YOU ARE GOING TO DO THE HEAVY LIFTING.  It does not matter if you go to an attorney that charges you $10,000.00 or more or you use the Ultimate Estate Planning Document System and receive the same quality documents, or better, it will still be your responsibility to do the “heart work.”  The “heart work” is wrestling with the questions like:

• whom you should choose as the guardians of your minor children?
• should there be a different person controlling funds left for the child’s benefit?
• who should be a successor trustee of any trust we create?
• do I want to protect my surviving spouse and children from potential creditors and predators after my death?
• do I need to treat my children equally?
• is financial equality the same as fairness?

No one can answer these questions (and many others) for you.  This is what makes your estate plan unique.

The attorney will ask you questions and may share valuable insights from his experience.  It is likely he will provide you with a checklist or organizer to assist you in exploring your goals and objectives in the estate planning process.  Once you have completed the checklist and answered the questions, the attorney has his assistant input the information into his document assembly system which produces the finished estate planning documents. 

The process is very similar when producing your own estate planning document using the Ultimate Interactive Estate Planning Document System.  Instead of driving to the attorney’s fancy office (which is part of fixed overhead which needs to be covered every month), you sit down at your computer in the comfort and privacy of your home or office, enter the same information into the system you would have provided to the attorney

You are smart enough to do your own estate plan and the documents with the right help

You may be thinking, “well this all sounds great in theory, but I don’t know the difference between a testator and a tator-tot.”  Not to worry.  With a little topic specific education, some definitional help and the intuitive guided interview, you will be equipped to create your documents.  You decide who, what, where and when and the software will handle the how and that pesky legalese necessary to make the how happen.

I recently read an article that warned:

 “Even those advocating self-help options warn that some situations aren’t appropriate for DIY. These cases can include people with multimillion-dollar estates, disabled children who require special needs trusts, blended families (especially where there may be animosity between the kids and the new spouse), property in foreign countries and complex family businesses”

This is simply not true.  Each of the situations described above can be addressed by utilizing the document drafting and assembly software used by IEDS.online.  As we stated before, the hard part of the planning process is deciding what you want to have happen.  You need to decide between and sometimes balance the competing interests in blended families (his, her’s and maybe ours).  If you have a child that is or may be receiving government benefits you may wish to incorporate a special needs trust in your Revocable Living Trust, also easily done with IEDS.  If you have a multi-million-dollar estate, our software is powerful enough to create QTIP, QDOT, A/B trusts as needed.  Don’t know what those are?  That’s why we have FAQ areas, Instructional Videos, Blog Articles and links to other helpful educational materials.

One reasonable observation is that as with any Do-It-Yourself or Self-Help program, you need to be willing to read the materials, watch the instructional videos and take the process seriously.

The glimmer of truth in the quote above is, that if you try to deal with a complex situation with a simple tool such as Nolo®, LegalZoom®, LegalShield®, Willing®, LawDepot® or similar cookie-cutter, one size fits all solution peddlers you likely will run into trouble.

You are going to be doing all most of the heavy lifting in your estate plan

Lawyers by and large are honest, hardworking and want to do right by their clients, but they are also business people who have bills of their own to pay, overhead to meet, and just like the rest of us only 24 hours in the day.  They have grown comfortable as the gatekeeper of the passage of assets from one generation to the next.  There was a time in the not so distant past when estate planning documents were created on typewriters with cotton bond legal paper and carbon paper copies.  Document creation was truly labor intensive.  Form files were physical not digital and cut and paste wasn’t metaphorical.  Draft documents had to be meticulously reviewed for errors and, when found, significant effort was employed to correct them.

Today is very different and almost every estate planning attorney uses DAS (Document Assembly Systems), because they offer the consistency and efficiency needed to stay competitive in the market. 

Regardless of whether you use an attorney or the Ultimate Interactive Estate Planning Document System you will still be responsible for:

• Selecting someone to act as your executor or personal representative and their alternates or successors.
• Selecting the person(s) you wish to designate as guardian for your minor children
• Deciding on whether the person you selected as guardian for the children should also oversee the funds you are designating for their care.
• Selecting the person or persons you wish to act as your Successor Trustee.
• Assembling a list of your assets, their locations, approximate values and current titling.
• Creating a list of your digital assets, logins and user IDs, passwords.
• Choosing a person to hold your Financial Power of Attorney in the event of your incapacity.
• Choosing alternates for powerholders in the event your first choice or second or more is unavailable or unwilling to serve.
• Determining who is to receive your assets when you die.
• Determining what asset each person or entity should receive.
• Determining when assets should be held and when and if they should be distributed to the selected person or entity.
• Deciding on what is fair.
• Deciding whether you wish to be fair.
• Determining in advance under what circumstances you would decline or receive medical treatment if unable to communicate those decisions.
• Picking someone to make medical decisions for you in the event you are unable to.
• Choosing alternates for the persons listed above.
• Declaring your choice as to whether your agents act alone, together, or in a designated order of preference.

With the Ultimate Interactive Estate Planning Document System Your Plan is Finished but Not Final

Just because you have finished your estate planning documents it doesn’t mean they are final.  The one thing that is certain is that things change.  Life events occur regularly and often they necessitate a change to our estate planning documents. Here are a just a few examples:

• Birth or Adoption of a child or grandchild
• Change in your financial health
• Critical illness of an individual or family member
• Incapacity requiring home or assisted living care
• Retirement
• Death of a family member
• Moving to a new state
• Purchase or sale of a home
• Change in marital status
• Children reaching age of majority
• Divorce
• Changes in tax or other applicable laws

As mentioned before, attorneys only have their time to sell.  Especially in the case of estate planning document reviews, you will in most cases be charged a flat fee and an hourly fee for any significant changes required resulting from the review.  It is not uncommon for these fees to run into hundreds if not thousands of dollars depending on the time and effort required to update your existing documents. 

In cases where relocation to a different state is involved, there may be a suggestion to simply start the process from the beginning or do a complete restatement of a revocable trust and rewrite of the state specific powers of attorney and health care powers because of differences in state law.  How many times are you going to have to pay for the same set of documents?  This question often keeps people from starting the process in the first place if they anticipate a move in their future.

Ultimate Interactive Estate Planning Document System answers the question with a simple cost-effective answer. ONCE.  When you prepare your estate planning documents using our system you can make changes as needed, at any time during your first year, completely for free.  After the first year there is an optional maintenance fee of $9.00/month which provides for continued access to the drafting system for any desired changes to your documents needed resulting from life change events.

The Finest Luxury Car Won’t Take You Far Without Gas in the Tank

With all due respect to electric vehicles, fuel is required to move you down the road.  Similarly, Funding your Trust is critical to making your estate plan work properly. Funding your Trust is the process of retitling assets that are titled in your name or in joint names into the name of the Revocable Living Trust, or for assets that require a beneficiary designation, naming the Revocable Living Trust as the primary or secondary beneficiary of those assets.

Why should you fund your trust?

• Assets held outside of your revocable living trust cannot be managed by your trustee.The trustee of your Revocable Living Trust has no power whatsoever over the property that has not been retitled in the name of the Trust. 
• Assets held outside of your Revocable Living Trust may need to go through probate. The property that has not been retitled in the name of the Revocable Living Trust may have to go through probateafter your death. This, in turn, will defeat one of the main benefits of creating a Revocable Living Trust—avoiding probate.
• Assets held outside of your revocable living trust may not go to your intended beneficiaries.After your death, a property that is held outside of your Revocable Living Trust cannot be disposed of as provided in the trust agreement. Instead, assets held outside of the trust may pass by rights of survivorship to other joint owners or to the beneficiary named on the beneficiary designation form such as is used for a Payable On Death account or Transfer On Death account.

Even though funding your trust after its creation is such a critical step, most attorneys will not include that step in their “flat fee” engagement.  Each person’s financial situation is unique.  You may have one bank account, two life insurance policies, a 401k plan and a home that all need to be transferred into your trust.  Or you may have a substantially larger number of assets that will need to be transferred into your trust.  Again, remember that the attorney has one item that is his or her “Stock in Trade” – Time. 

Many estate planning attorneys will provide you with a “Funding Memorandum” or Instructions that will provide information helpful in changing titling to your Revocable Living Trust.  Funding your trust isn’t difficult but it will take some time, either yours or the attorney’s, so be forewarned.  Should you choose the Ultimate Interactive Estate Planning Document System to prepare your estate planning documents, preparing transfer letters and beneficiary designation change directions is included at no extra cost. 

It doesn’t take months complete your estate planning documents

For most people, gathering personal and financial information and determining goals and objectives (the who, what, where and when) will probably take the most time in your estate planning process.  When it comes time to actually create your estate planning documents with Ultimate Interactive Estate Planning Document System, it helps to have a completed Estate Document Data Worksheet to speed the process. Completion of the online interactive questionnaire usually takes about 30-45 minutes.  Once that is completed, your questions are internally reviewed and sent for draft generation.  Drafts are typically sent for client review within a couple of hours. 

Your situation is not too complicated to your own estate planning even if you have been married more than once or own a business.

The Ultimate Interactive Estate Planning Document System is the same one I use in my private estate planning law practice where we deal with all types of family structures and business situations.  You are always wise to educate yourself in the areas that are of specific concern to you and your situation.  Should you want a professional review of your documents, we can put you in touch with attorneys in your State that utilize the same Document Assembly System so that they will have a familiarity with the language utilized in your Ultimate Interactive Estate Planning Document System documents to speed their review and therefore save you both time and money.

Ultimate Interactive Estate Planning Document System provides you with all the tool and knowhow to do a complete, custom designed, law-firm quality estate plan and document set.

Contents of every Ultimate Interactive Estate Planning Document System plan:

1. Easy to Read and Understand Summary of Estate Planning Provisions
2. Instructions for Successor Trustees and Other Fiduciaries
3. Premier Personalized Probate Avoidance Revocable Living Trust
4. Declaration of Trust
5. Certification of Trust
6. Assignment of Personal Property
7. Instructions for the Distribution of Personal Property (a form to be completed after receipt of the Trust Package)
8. Last Will and Testament including Pour-Over Language Into Your Revocable Living Trust.
9. Durable Power of Attorney for Financial Matters
10. Advance Directive for Health Care (which includes the “Living Will”)
11. HIPAA Authorization and Waiver
12. Digital Assets Inventory
13. Financial Assets Worksheet
14. Document Finder
15. Key Advisors Worksheet
16. Close Friends and Relatives Worksheet
17. Final Disposition Instructions (i.e., “Burial Instructions”)
18. Instructions for Transferring Assets to Your Trust
19. The Transfer Documents
20. Unlimited Revisions for One Year, Optional Maintenance Thereafter for $9.00/Month