Excellent advice for complex estates (and I'm not just referring to high net worth estates). For more than basic planning, each lawyer's methodology in planning and the final product varies greatly, as you would expect. Multiple initial consults will help clients determine who to work with.
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Second marriages and blended families can make things plenty complex. Also special needs trusts and dependents with expected lifelong disabilities.
That said, you want to be careful about getting a great set of paper documents but stumbling on the one yard line and failing to retitle assets and fund trusts. Either make sure you're comfortable finishing all of your assigned tasks or pay (a reasonable fee) to have all assets retitled as necessary to make the plan your trust and estate lawyer drafted effective.👍 1Comment
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What this means is, firms like ours do a lot of estate tax tax returns. And this is all a long way around to say that the estate stuff gets really messy. It's like doing someone's tax return when they're going through a divorce. Something that should take a couple of hours instead takes ten hours.
Which makes me say this: Anything you can do to not set up your heirs or your spouse for a dumpster fire is worth considering.
P.S. My quote for a Washington state estate tax return is 10-12 hours if your attorney has done her or his work. But if you and the heirs fight or you're discombobulated because you've just lost your spouse or things get messy, it could easily double or triple. (BTW, just for the record, I don't actually do these myself. A CPA and a tax attorney in our firm both of whom specialize in this do them.)👍 1Comment
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