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Other Services:
Estate Planning PackagesPackage for couples: Package for individuals: **Please note that follow-up questions via email or telephone are included in all package pricing. However, follow consultations, including trips to the client’s home or office for signing of documents or explanation of drafts may be charged at the hourly rate.
Fees for Individual DocumentsLiving trusts: Special
Needs Trust: Wills: Additional Deeds needed to transfer California real property
to a trust: Advance Health Care Directives: Durable powers of attorney
for financial purposes:
Pre-Nuptial & Ante-nuptial
Agreements: Guardianship
Provisions: **Copying & postage to client included for all estate planning packages & flat fee document preparation ***Please note that documents requested on an expedited basis may be charged an additional 25%.
Other FeesTrust administration & advisement, document review & drafting;
preparation of
deeds and other estate planning advisement or document review: Trust or Will Review & Amendment: These fees will remain in effect until June 30, 2008. Fees are subject to change without notice. We are proud to accept these credit cards. Please note that if you wish to use a credit card, full payment is due when our services are retained:
INFORMATION YOU WILL NEED TO KNOW BEFORE YOUR ESTATE PLANNING
CONSULTATION: I. SCHEDULING THE INITIAL APPOINTMENT Initial consultations regarding estate plans include the following: a one hour consultation explaining the differences between wills and trusts, description of various trusts, explanation of advance healthcare directives and durable powers of attorney, explanation of different options for holding title to real property, opportunity to answer any questions about estate planning and/or the probate process and a review of client’s estate planning goals. At your initial consultation, you will have an opportunity to ask any questions you have about the estate planning and probate process and you will have the opportunity to explain the goals you want your estate plan to achieve. We also will suggest any tax-saving ideas that may apply to your circumstances. Through the interchange of ideas at this meeting, we will work together to formulate an appropriate estate plan for you. Please note that follow-up questions via email or telephone are included in all package pricing. However, follow consultations, including trips to the client’s home or office for signing of documents or explanation of drafts may be charged at the hourly rate. II. EXCHANGING INFORMATION III. LEGAL FEES However, our consulting services, and preparation of complex estate planning instruments, are based on an hourly rate of at least $200.00 per hour. Further, if you wish to have an estimate of our fees for the preparation of estate planning documents, please feel free to ask us at anytime. Of course, our ability to estimate the actual legal fees for document preparation will depend upon the clarity of your instructions and your requested changes to draft documents. Please keep in mind that we will also bill for conference time (whether by telephone or in person) and appropriate tax research applicable to your estate plan. IV.
PREPARATION OF
YOUR DOCUMENTS After the documents have been reviewed by you and have been finalized, the documents will be mailed to you with detailed instructions on how to execute them. V. STORAGE OF DOCUMENTS 2. Trust Agreements. If you execute a separate trust agreement (called an "inter vivos trust," a "living trust," a "revocable trust" or one of a variety of "irrevocable trusts"), you will sign one original of the agreement for each trustee and one for yourself. Please ask us about information pertinent to your trustee's fiduciary duties. 3. Advance Health-Care Directives. If you execute an advance health-care directive (sometimes called a "living will" or "Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare"), you will sign two originals. These originals are distributed with two goals in mind: preservation of the instrument and assurance of its availability if it is needed. At a minimum, you should keep one handy at home (not in a safe deposit box). 4. Powers of Attorney. If you sign powers of attorney, you will sign two originals. Multiple originals of the power of attorney are desirable because your agent (or "attorney-in-fact") may have to surrender an original to a bank or to a person with whom your agent conducts your business. Should you require more than two original powers of attorney, let us know before your appointment for signing these documents and we can prepare additional originals for you. 5. In General. We will provide you with copies of all documents that you sign. You should review the documents periodically to make sure they still reflect your wishes in light of any changes in your family or financial situation. If a change in any of the documents becomes necessary or advisable, please call us to discuss it. Please understand that we are not responsible for updating your estate planning documents as that is the responsibility of the client. VI. MULTIPLE CLIENTS Understanding the kinds of conflicts that might arise between you: One of you might provide us with confidential information that you do not want us to share with the other. You each might have very different views regarding the distribution of your property among various family members and others. One of you might favor a trust for the other when outright distribution of your estate to your spouse might be what your spouse wants. As your lawyers, we have ethical obligations to preserve your confidences and to act in your best interest. Accordingly, we will represent both of you only on a "joint representation" basis. Under this type of representation, both of you are viewed as a single client. We cannot advocate for one of you against the other. Rather, we assist you, as a couple, in developing and coordinating your respective estate plans. In other words, we must be free to pass on to your spouse any information that you provide to us as your lawyers if it is relevant to your spouse's estate planning arrangements. Spouses who have been previously married and are part of blended families have unique needs. For example, many couples are surprised to discover that they cannot put in place an estate plan that provides solely for children from a previous marriage without running the risk that the survivor will exercise certain rights afforded by statute and change that estate plan. In these situations, regardless of how the spouses feel toward one another, a postnuptial agreement should be considered. Individuals who plan to marry also have special needs. They may have assets and family concerns that must be addressed before marriage so as to avoid the impact of certain rights granted by statute to their spouse by virtue of their marriage. In these situations, a premarital agreement merits consideration. We usually can represent one of you in preparing a marital agreement (premarital or postnuptial) and can assist the other with finding separate counsel. Each of you should have separate counsel to ensure that the marital agreement will work. 2. Other Family Members. When we are asked to work with other members of your family, such as children, siblings or parents, or when your family members are already our clients, the ethical concerns discussed above surface as well. Ordinarily, lawyers are obligated to share with clients all information that might be important to the client and relevant to the client's planning. We can find ourselves in a conflict because of our duty to preserve confidential information provided to us by the other family members who are also our clients. As lawyers, we can represent multiple units of the same family in one of two ways; one way involves sharing information and the other focuses on preserving confidential information. We choose the latter type of representation in this situation and treat each family unit as a separate client whose confidences we preserve. This approach is the opposite of the married couple situation. Simply put, all confidences are kept except those that you authorize us to share with other family members. If, during the course of this "dual" representation of each family unit, information that is provided to us by either family unit becomes pertinent to the decisions of the other family unit, we will ask permission to share that information. In the extreme situation when the information is absolutely necessary to the family unit and permission to share it is denied, we will withdraw from the representation of both family units so as to avoid harming both clients. VII. RETITLING OF ASSETS The preparation of the trust transfer deed for your primary residence, as well as the accompanying paperwork is included in the fees for the trust and package. However, because each client's situation is unique, we address retitling of assets as a separate item from the drafting of the estate plan. As with consulting services, these tasks are handled on an hourly basis. VIII. RETIREMENT PLANS & LIFE INSURANCE
POLICIES IX. OUR FIRM AS YOUR FIDUCIARY X. BILLING XI. PRIVACY POLICY NOTICE
Please Ask Us How We Can Help You Plan Your Personal Legacy We are excited to offer a new service whereby we assist you with what is commonly known as an ethical will. We prefer to call it your personal legacy because you are much richer than the sum of your material assets, yet your legal will only addresses the question, “What do I want my loved ones to have?” An Ethical Will is a personal legacy letter/recording/video that transmits the non-material assets that are also of great importance: your values, your story, the lessons life has taught you, the information that is too valuable to risk being lost. Your Ethical Will is the tool that enables you to address the question, “What do I want my loved ones to know?” Not everyone can pass along a financial legacy, but everybody can transmit some of the richness of life by creating an Ethical Will. Ask us more about this exciting new service and how we can assist you in developing your personal legacy. Please let us know if you have any questions about the information contained in this statement. We want you to understand and be comfortable with the arrangements. We look forward to assisting you through the estate planning process and with any other consulting services that you and your family require assistance with.
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