"My situation is simple. Why should I pay thousands of dollars to an estate planning attorney to prepare a living trust or will?"

We get it. No one wants to pay more for something they can get cheaper. You feel like you have a simple situation and writing a trust or will should be easy to do yourself, with just a little bit of help with the "right language."

You search "affordable living trust" and found a cheap online website for you to prepare your own estate plan like Legalzoom, or see you see a flyer advertising an "affordable" Living Trust for just $599, or a friend recommends a cheap service like LegalShield. Or your employer has a legal service plan that pays for a basic estate plan.

Why are these not good options?

A non-attorney or paralegal cannot give legal advice

This is the fine print language you will see on the self-help services. It is illegal for a paralegal or notary to give legal advice. Legal advice include answering questions on how to complete the form, such as how title should be held, the consequences of this choice, explanations of what happens with this language or form, etc. Any legal advice must come from an attorney licensed in your state.

Paralegals or notaries or document preparers can't help you decide if there is a better option or advise you on unexpected tax consequences (and even a simple estate plan can have tax consequences). Just because something is legally allowed doesn't mean it's the best option for you. The cheap option may result in higher, unexpected fees in the end because you didn't receive the proper advice.

A document preparer simply takes the information you give them and enter it into a template. The template often overlooks major areas and likely won't accomplish the client's goals. Worse, the client doesn't understand the documents or use them correctly because they have no guidance. Many of the trusts we've seen drafted by paralegals or document preparers have serious deficiencies and drafting errors, costing clients even more money to fix.

If someone cannot give legal advice, they CANNOT create a comprehensive Estate Plan that considers different situations, laws, and client needs.

A trust mill cannot give good legal advice

On the other end, are the trust mills. Trust mills are high volume, low cost firms that often never meet with their clients. Maybe there is an attorney involved, but that attorney is licensed in another state or the client never meets with the attorney. Sometimes these are services that are offered by their financial planner or as part of a legal subscription plan. If you never spend quality time with an attorney discussing your estate plan, that's a red flag.

Trust mills only do boilerplate work, generally do not spend much time or follow-up on funding the trust, and treat each client’s situation the same without regard to differences in needs and goals. The nature of trust mills is that because they charge so little, they cannot effectively guide their clients, do not customize the plans for their clients (unless the clients have the savvy to know what to ask for), and have to take on a large amount of clients in order to make their practice profitable. High volume, low-cost firms CANNOT focus on each client’s specific needs because their business model does not allow for this level of detail. In fact, many times there is no attorney oversight of the trusts being prepared.

For instance, most married couples don't need a bypass trust in their living trust. But a trust mill may automatically include the unnecessary bypass trust in their boilerplate template - costly the clients thousands of dollars in trust administration fees and unintended distribution of assets when the first spouse passes away. Or they don't evaluate the characteristic of the asset in light of California's laws, potentially losing thousands of dollars in tax savings.

Another sign of poor drafting is automatic inclusion of a disclaimer trust, which is often misunderstood and rarely executed correctly.

With a trust mill, your trust is prepared entirely based on your responses to a questionnaire. But often clients don't understand the questionnaire (Do I include the house that I only have a 10% interest in but my sister lives there and makes all the payments? What about my timeshare?) and leave out essential information. Because an attorney is not getting to know the clients and asking questions, the clients don't know to share important information for the trust and the trust doesn't meet their needs.

Estate Planning is one area where one size doesn't fit all.

Estate planning can be a complex area, with potential negative tax consequences even in "simple" cases. In fact, it's an area of law where other attorneys not practicing estate planning who decide to "dabble" in creating a trust, have messed up.

You don't know what you don't know

We have worked with clients who had previous trusts drafted by document preparers and even other attorneys. Most of the time, we find areas where their previous documents had serious negative consequences like an unnecessary bypass trust which cost the client thousands more to correct.

WE GIVE YOU THE POWER OVER YOUR TRUST

"You are so thorough. You've explained things more clearly than my previous estate planning attorney."

We want to ensure YOU understand YOUR plan and how YOUR estate plan works. More importantly, we take the time to give you the power to make choices that other preparers automatically choose for you. We explain the pros and cons of each choice and empower you to control exactly how your estate plan works. We are concerned not just the theoretical risks, but how the trust will work in reality, so you aren't paying excess fees for little benefit.

We take a holistic approach to estate planning. We don't just prepare a trust. We take the time to get to know you and your family so we can ensure your goals will be met. You are not a transaction. We genuinely care about you and our community that we all live in.