You should be remembered by the life you lived, not by the pain of administering your estate. A well-done, attorney-prepared estate plan helps secure your legacy.
Which Estate Plan is Right For You?
Which estate plan documents are right for you is a measure of several factors. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. However, through years of experience in preparing estate plans, we are able to quickly determine what is the best estate plan for you.
We offer a FREE initial consultation so that you can determine how we can most effectively serve you.
At Ackerman Law, we offer a unique service for our estate-plan clients – the Legacy Preservation Service. This service resolves many of the issues with estate plans that persist even after a client hires an estate-planning attorney. The service encourages a closer working relationship with the client and the law firm that is typical of modern estate planning. The initial consultation is where we verify that the Legacy Preservation Service is right for you or if another service better suits your needs.
During our initial consultation, we discuss your concerns, obtain important information, and determine how we can help you. After that, and after you have fully engaged us, we have a second consultation to obtain further information needed to fully prepare your estate plan. Then we begin the preparation of your necessary estate-plan documents. Once complete, we assure your estate plan is signed in a way to minimize any potential attempts by begrudging family members to challenge the legitimacy of your estate plan. Once signed, we record any deeds that are part of your estate plan with the proper county recorder and finalize your estate-plan binder. We then have a final meeting to explain the purpose of the documents in your binder and return it to you.
Included with our Legacy Preservation Service, we meet with you annually to discuss any changes in your life that require alteration of your estate plan. By meeting with you on a regular basis, we will know your estate plan and your situation better than most any other attorney possibly could. This is designed to keep your estate plan documents in line with your intentions and give those administering your estate a seamless bridge between your wishes and what is done in your trust/estate administration.
Though attorneys typically charge either by the hour or as a flat-fee, our experience has shown that these transactional models do not work well for clients. That is because an estate plan is not a destination but a continuous process: estate plans must change as life situations change. For that reason, we no longer charge to prepare estate-plan documents for most clients as they are recommended to subscribe to our Legacy Preservation Service. The annual cost of which will be discussed during our initial consultation. Once locked in, your prices will not increase except to adjust for CPI. You may also opt for annual billing following the initial five years of service. However, there are rare instances where hourly or flat fee representation is used in conjunction with or instead of the Legacy Preservation Service.
With our Legacy Preservation Service, we assist you by doing the following:
- Preparing the following documents:
- Living Trust
- Last Will and Testament
- General Financial Power of Attorney
- Advance Healthcare Directive (sometimes referred to as Health Care Power of Attorney)
- Deeds Into Trust for Arizona properties without title complications (up to 20)
- ADOT Vehicle Beneficiary Form
- Tangible Personal Property Sheet
- Password Sheet
- Unlimited changes to any of the above documents because of removal or addition of beneficiaries, change of percentage to a beneficiary, change of fiduciaries (i.e. trustee, personal representative, or agents), change of name, or change of address of anyone named in your estate plan.
- Prepare Deeds Into Trust for newly acquired properties without title complications.
- No charge for phone calls and email to answer any questions you have about your estate plan.
- Meet with you annually to discuss your estate plan provisions and determine no changes to your estate plan needs to be made.
Services that are not part of the Legacy Preservation Service include the following:
- Changes to law or policy that result in recommended or needed changes to an estate plan – we will still offer a discounted price to make changes resulting from this circumstance.
- Changes to beneficiary designations with financial institutions (bank, brokerage, etc.) – we offer to handle this on hourly basis, but financial institutions will still require a significant amount of involvement from you personally.