By now, we hope you’ve seen that our firm is something special. You love your family and know they deserve the kind of protection, guidance, and love we help you provide for a lifetime. It’s important that you know how we work because we do things a bit differently than other law firms. That’s why our clients love us so much!
Schedule Your Personal Family Wealth Planning Session
Call our office at 704-288-4700 to schedule your personal Family Wealth Planning Session and ask to speak with Lauren, our Client Services Director. Lauren will schedule the most convenient appointment time available for you with Zachary. We see new clients on Thursdays and Fridays and we even have evening or weekend appointments available to make planning as convenient for you as possible.
When you schedule your personal Family Wealth Planning Session, we block 2 hours on our calendar so we can focus entirely on you and your family during this time. We will send you a package of information to complete before our time together, which will help you begin the process of getting your legal and financial life in order. During our meeting together, we will guide you to gently look at what would happen for your loved ones and with your assets if something were to happen to you. And then, we’ll look at what you want to happen and help you create a roadmap to get that plan in place as easily as possible.
Our Family Wealth Planning Session is $750. If we create a comprehensive plan for you, that planning fee is applied to your legal fees for your lifetime estate plan. If you mention that you found us through our website, we will waive the planning session fee and instead you can secure your appointment time with a credit card number. As long as you keep your appointment, nothing will be charged on your card unless you decide to proceed with a comprehensive estate plan after the Family Wealth Planning Session. If you must cancel within 1 week of your appointment, your credit card will still not be charged unless you fail to reschedule your appointment within 30 days of your cancellation. If you cannot keep your appointment and you choose not to reschedule, your credit card would be charged the $750 planning fee.
We understand that this policy of securing your appointment with a credit card may seem a little different. So is our law firm. We provide our very best service to those families who are looking for a long-term relationship with a trusted advisor. We expend most of our energy providing an exceedingly high degree of service to our existing clients and limit the number of new clients we see each week. As a result, we must secure your appointment time so that if something comes up and you can’t attend your appointment, we will have enough advance notice to open the slot to a waiting family.
What to Do Prior to Your Personal Family Wealth Planning Session
About three days after scheduling your appointment, you will receive a mailer with your Family Wealth Inventory & Assessment and other important information that you will want to review prior to your personal Family Wealth Planning Session. We must have your Family Wealth Inventory & Assessment returned to our office three days prior to your session either by mail, fax, or electronic mail or we will need to reschedule your session. Feel free to call the office at any time if you need assistance completing your worksheet or have any questions at all.
If you have existing estate planning documents, please make sure that you include copies of your existing documents with your Family Wealth Inventory & Assessment so that we can review them prior to meeting with you.
What to Expect the Day of Your Personal Family Wealth Planning Session
On the day of your meeting, please expect to spend up to 2 hours with your attorney. The initial meeting with your attorney has two purposes:
- To identify whether there is a good fit between you and the attorney who will become your Personal Family Lawyer and…
- To educate you about the law and what would happen if you died with your current (or no) plan in place.
By looking at what would happen under your current plan, you can identify what you would want to happen differently and then, together with your Personal Family Lawyer’s guidance, make the decisions that are necessary to give you the peace of mind of knowing your family would be taken care of in the way you want if something happened to you.
Assuming that you and your attorney determine that there is a good fit between our firm and your family AND that you identify specific ways you would want things to happen that are different than what would happen under your existing plan, you and your Personal Family Lawyer can design a plan for your family right away.
What Happens Next?
Once you and your Personal Family Lawyer have completed the design of your plan, you will meet with our Client Services Director, who will review your assets for the purpose of ensuring that everything you own will be titled for maximum protection and will schedule a meeting for you to sign your planning documents approximately four weeks later.
We have a process of reviewing your documents with you that makes your plan so easy to understand that you will know for certain that we understood exactly the way you want things to happen if something happens to you and that your loved ones will be in excellent hands with our firm. Once you sign your planning documents, your assets and your family are protected as discussed during your design meeting.
For most firms, that would mark the end of the relationship. We see the signing as only the beginning of our relationship with your family. For starters, you may make changes to your planning documents at no charge for up to 90 days after you sign your documents.
At our final meeting during the planning stage of our relationship, we will verify that all of your asset transfers are moving forward on track. We will review your asset spreadsheet with you and ensure that all of your questions are answered. Of course, if they aren’t, or they become cloudy later on, we are always available to answer your questions at any time in the future. And there’s no charge for that.
What Happens After I Sign My Estate Planning Documents and Take Them Home?
After the planning phase is complete, the maintenance phase of your plan will begin. At no additional charge, we review your plan at least every three years. Through our weekly email updates and monthly newsletter, we keep you informed about changes in the law and about other issues that affect your family and your wealth. And, if you participate in one of our Family Wealth VIP Membership programs, you will have an opportunity to review your plan on an annual basis, and we will provide your family with a number of other valuable services. Finally, we are always here for you and we don’t charge you for phone calls, faxes, or emails. We welcome your communications!
You’ll be amazed at how easy and painless the entire planning process will be for your family.
To schedule an appointment or to request more information, just give us a call at 704-288-4700!
