Updating and Maintenance of Estate Plans

As discussed under Law Firm Procedures, our law firm employs a Three Step Strategy designed to create, implement, update and administer your estate plan to make sure that it will work. The first step is to work with a Counseling Oriented Attorney like Mr. Wittick. His mission is to develop a lifelong relationship with you. This article explains the second step of the Three Step Strategy which is to “Establish and Maintain an Ongoing Updating Program.” This program is critical because an estate plan is not about the documents – it’s about a process designed to produce results when they are needed most.

Your estate plan is really a private estate administration business that you own and operate. Your trust is the business structure or business plan and your trustees, executors and agents are your employees. Now, can you imagine any business owner ever assuming that the business would work properly after just signing the business structure paperwork and hiring the employees ? Of course not, but that is exactly what many trustmakers believe about their trusts. They believe it is a magic book, probably because they have never been counseled as to what it takes to make a trust or estate plan work. Now that you know your estate plan is not a magic book, the important question is “Will you commit to a process that is designed to produce results ?

Three Areas of Change That Must be Addressed

The truth is that, over time, there are many changes which can occur in a trustmaker’s personal life, in the law and in the experience of their estate planning lawyer which require amendments in the plan. Given this continuous process of change, your estate plan will not accomplish its purpose if it is never updated and the costs of failing to update are typically far greater than the costs to updat

• Changes in your life that may affect your estate plan may include changes in your assets or their values, the financial markets, your wishes concerning any aspect of your plan, your trustees, executors, guardians or agents, your family including marital status, birth or death, your job, business interest, health, or residence.
• Changes in the law may include changes in gift, estate, GST, or income tax rates or exemptions, asset protection, non tax law or legal strategies.
• Changes in your Lawyer : As a counseling oriented attorney, member of Wealth Counsel, and The Advisors Forum, who is constantly growing and being educated as to new cutting edge estate planning techniques, Mr. Wittick keeps a list of strategy and/or language changes that may benefit past clients.

How Do You Know if it is Time to Update ?

We recommend a regularly scheduled formal updating program outlined below. If you do not wish to engage in such a program, we recommend that you give us a call on the year anniversary of your plan execution date to discuss, at no charge, the current status of your plan, any changes that may have occurred and when we might schedule an updating meeting. We find that most clients wish to update at least every two years. We also invite you to fill out and send in the Estate Planning Needs Evaluation to identify areas where you need to update or require more information or assistance

Formal Regularly Scheduled Maintenance Program

We recommend a formal regularly scheduled maintenance program for the well being of your estate plan just like others you trust probably have recommended similar programs for the maintenance and/or record keeping of your income taxes, financial plan, personal health or automobile. We have also found that regularly scheduled meetings with prearranged fees will usually result in less legal expense because the costs of failing to update are typically far greater than the prearranged fees of regularly scheduled meetings. As with the creation of your original plan with us, we wish to customize this maintenance program to your wishes after being educated as to the alternatives so the following list is composed of suggested legal services that would be of benefit to your plan. We are also open to other services you might suggest. The fee will reflect the services selected

1. Meeting with Mr. Wittick and/or your other advisors every one or two years to review the status of your plan, possible changes, and recommendations.
2. Reasonable to unlimited “word processing” amendments to estate plan defined as changes that do not require legal counseling such as name or dollar amount changes or represent reflections of regular updates to our software, including restatements of entire plan every two or three years.
3. Additional copies of estate planning documents.
4. Reasonable to unlimited telephone consultation relating to the estate plan or to your advisors.
5. Attendance at “Trustee Training Workshop”, “Trustee Nuts and Bolts Workship”, “Trust Administration Workshop” and “Truth About Estate Planning Workshop” by trustmakers and successor trustees.
6. Preparation of Successor Trustee Manual.
7. Letters to all of your trustees, executors, agents and guardians, explaining the honor, responsibility and definition of their role in your plan and where to find documents when they are needed.
8. Assistance with transferring of title or change in beneficiary designations either by our office or PBO Solutions, LLC.
9. Handy wallet card with your trust information necessary to transfer assets to your trust.
10. Membership in “Docubank”, an innovative service that ensures your advanced healthcare directive is always available when and where it’s needed (they will fax it in seconds). For parents, your Docubank membership is also designed to activate your emergency response to ensure your children are cared for by the right people.
11. Review of Business document