How To Get Started
Call our office at 888-829-0894 to schedule your Personal Family Wealth Consultation and ask to speak with Trisha, our Client Services Director. Trisha will schedule the most convenient appointment time available for you. We see clients Monday through Saturday. We even have evening appointments available to make planning as convenient for you as possible.
When you schedule your Personal Family Wealth Consultation, you will provide your credit card number to secure your appointment. So long as you don't cancel your appointment within two weeks of your appointed consultation, nothing will be charged to your card. If you must cancel within two weeks 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 will be charged $500.
We understand that this policy of securing your appointment with a credit card may seem unique. So is our law firm. We provide our very best service to those families who are looking for a long-term relationship with their 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 Consultation
About three days after scheduling your appointment, you will receive a Priority Mailer with your Family Wealth Inventory and Assessment worksheet and other important information that you will want to review prior to your Family Wealth Consultation. We must have your worksheet returned to our office three days prior to your Consultation either by mail, fax or electronic mail. 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 we have your existing estate planning documents in our office at least a week before your meeting so that we can review them prior to meeting with you.
What to Expect the Day of Your Personal Family Wealth Consultation
On the day of your meeting, please expect to spend two 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 if something happened to you, 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 then schedule a meeting for you to sign your planning documents approximately four weeks later. We have a process of reviewing the 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 when something happens to you and that your loved ones will be in excellent hands with our firm. Once you sign your documents, your assets and your family are protected as discussed during your design meeting.
We also verify that all your asset transfers are moving forward on track whether we are taking the lead or you are taking the lead with our unlimited guidance. We review your asset spreadsheet with you and ensure 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.
At our third and final meeting during the Planning stage of our relationship, we will guide you to pass on more than just your financial wealth. We believe your financial wealth is only about a quarter of your overall "Family Wealth" which is made up of your far more valuable Intellectual, Spiritual and Human assets – who you are and what is important to you. Most estate plans are only able to transfer your financial wealth onto the next generation. The intangible nature of your much greater wealth has made it difficult to capture and it is most often lost when someone passes. How much do you know about your grandparents values? Their most prized personal possessions? How they felt about you? What they had learned during their lifetime? If you are like most people, you know very little. We have developed a tool that helps you to pass on this intangible wealth right along with your financial wealth.
We see this as only the beginning of our relationship. You may make changes to your planning documents at no charge for up to 90 days after you sign your documents. In addition, we send letters to all of the important people you have named as health care agents, trustees and guardians letting them know just what to do if something happens to you – namely, call us, we're here for your family!
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 and keep you informed at least monthly 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. Call us today!
