Maybe you’ve heard that before investing in a professional service you should “get three estimates.” While often this is wise
advice, it’s actually a bad idea when it comes to estate planning. This article explains why and how you can ensure you get the
most efficient and affordable plan possible for your family without shopping for estate planning lawyers the way you may think.
Let’s begin with why “getting three estimates” for an estate plan doesn’t work to actually get you what you want.
First and foremost, this recommendation assumes that you should be shopping for an estate plan based on cost and that you
understand exactly what you are shopping for and how to evaluate those estimates.
Shopping for an estate plan based on getting the lowest cost plan possible is the fastest path to leaving your family with an empty
set of documents (maybe in a beautiful binder, but not worth the paper they are written on) that won’t actually work for your
family when they need it.
Unfortunately, we see the negative effects of cheap estate planning when family members come to us during a time of grief with
that fancy binder that sat on the shelf for years sending out signals of false security, full of out of date estate planning documents
and find themselves stuck in Court or conflict, even though that’s exactly what their loved one thought they had paid someone to
handle for them.
Here’s 5 reasons why shopping for the cheapest estate plan is likely to leave you with a plan that won’t work for your family …
and will leave them with a big mess instead.
1. The least expensive plan isn’t worth the paper it’s written on once you’ve left the attorney’s office — your life changes,
the law changes, and your assets change over time; your plan needs to keep up with those changes.
And, the truth of the matter is that a lawyer can’t afford to provide anything more than documents that won’t get updated when
you only pay a few hundred dollars for a plan. The business model simply doesn’t work.
2. That’s why … cheap estate plans are often sold by financial professionals who want to get their hands on your money,
not do right by your family — an attorney who has built a practice to actually serve your family in their best interests
cannot make a living selling $399 plans; only insurance and financial professionals getting paid commissions to sell your
families annuities and life insurance products they don’t need can make a living selling cheap documents. Buyer beware!
3. Forms and documents won’t be there for your family when you can’t be — you want to leave your loved one’s a
relationship with a trusted advisor who you have built a relationship with during your lifetime and who has met them
and they already trust.
4. You get what you pay for and it’s your family that pays the price — as you read in the story in the callout box, my
colleague’s father in law died after paying $3,000 for an estate plan (not cheap) so that his family wouldn’t have to deal
with the probate court or his ex-wife after his death, and yet that’s exactly what happened when he died — his family was
in court and dealing with his ex-wife. Why?
Because the law firm was a traditional forms and documents firm that put in place plans, but didn’t make sure assets
were owned in the right way or the plan stayed up to date over time. You might think that’s malpractice, but it’s not. It’s
common practice and it leaves your family at risk if and when something happens to you!
5. An estate plan isn’t a set it and forget it kind of thing, it needs to stay up to date with changes in your life, the law and
your assets.
There’s currently more than $3 billion in unclaimed property held by our state.Yep, that billion with a B. It typically
gets there when someone dies or becomes incapacitated and their family loses track of it because it wasn’t tracked well
during life. And that’s just one way your family loses out if you’ve shopped around for the cheapest estate plan rather
than getting in place a plan that actually works for the people you love.
If what you want is the false security of a cheap estate plan, go online and do it yourself. Chances are, you haven’t done that
because you know that’s risky business and you love your family too much for that.
Well, it’s the same way when you are shopping around town for the cheapest plan possible. Because you love your family, you
don’t actually want the cheap plan, you want the plan that’s going to work for the people you love, when they need it.
In my next article, I’ll share with you 5 questions you can ask when hiring a lawyer to prepare an estate plan for the people you
love.
In the meantime, if you already have an estate plan in place and you are concerned you may have gotten a cheap plan that won’t
actually serve your family when they need it most, contact us for a plan review. You can either have us do it for you, or you save
some money by doing it yourself with our guidance and then come in to discuss what you discovered along the way.