Why Do I Want to Work with an Estate Planning Attorney?

Did you know that in some circles an attorney is referred to as a "counselor at law"? A person who can listen to what you say, and what you don't say, and help you determine what you need, and how to get you where you want to go within a specific legal framework.  

This perspective, and this ability, comes strongly into focus when preparing an estate plan. Having the opportunity to talk through all of your "what if...?", to have them raised for you and explored with you is an invaluable opportunity. This opportunity is not presented with an online form where we answer preset questions, or if we talk to someone who has their own experiences with estate planning, even with tangential professional experience such as financial planning or paralegal work. 

Most of us do not have experience with an "estate plan" when we decide that we want to put something together for when we pass away.  Maybe we knew someone with a trust, maybe our parents or grandparents have one, but we don't really know what exactly an estate plan is. We see the scene in the movie of the attorney reading the will and wonder if that is what we need to do. We talk to our friends and hear that what we really want is "a trust". Even still, when we hear the words "estate plan" we think of the rich and famous - or at least someone that we...aren't. 

Once we learn what an estate plan actually is (you can take a look at this blog post I wrote on that question here) we start wondering how we can go about putting something together that is actually appropriate for our own lives. 

I think the question of whether someone needs to work with an attorney to prepare their estate plan might be one of the most common questions that people think about and ask themselves once they have realized that they need an estate plan. There are lots of different options out there, and it can feel hard to know what is right for each of us. Sometimes we might think that preparing our estate plan is just a fill in the blank process where we just need to enter our names onto the right forms, or we might think that we need to find someone who can fill in our names to these forms for us. Or maybe we think that working with a legal diy service is the right way to go. 

The thing to remember is that we don't know what we don't know, and often times we don't even know that we don't know. This is true for estate planning as much as any other area.

Estate planning is an area where we can have lots of questions: 

• Who will help me? 
• Who will get my things?
• How do I make sure that the right person gets what they are supposed to?
• What happens if I am unable to handle things myself?

These are some of the easier questions. The harder ones come next - and when you work with an estate planning attorney after we answer the easy questions we can move on to asking and answering the hard questions. Preparing a comprehensive estate plan that will contain the answers to the questions that suddenly arise when our first answers no longer work, by working with an attorney who is experienced in preparing documents, interpreting the law, and will be able to help ask and help you to answer the questions that apply to your family and your own special set of life circumstances.

An experienced estate planning attorney will help you answer those questions, and they can even help you remember to ask the questions in the first place. Reach out to the Law Office of Michelle D. Smith today to learn more and get started.

Disclaimer: Michelle D. Smith is a California Licensed attorney, SBN 233515.  The materials contained on this page is for general informational purposes, it should not be considered formal legal advice and does not create a formal lawyer/client relationship.