your costs up front and the second half upon completion, or set up a payment schedule. Not all firms do this because it is risky for them, but some do, so it cannot hurt to ask.
• Keep face-to-face meetings brief and to the point. One way you can achieve this is to prepare as much as possible ahead of time. If you phone a lawyer to make your first appointment, ask what you should bring to the meeting. Make photocopies to give to the lawyer. Make notes or lists of questions to bring with you to the meeting.
3. Believing That Estate Planning Is Only for Rich People
The word “estate” tends to make people think of enormous homes with fenced acreages and overseas bank accounts belonging to multi-millionaires. The phrase “estate planning” can conjure up visions of corporate empires. In other words, a lot of people think that estate planning is only for the very wealthy. This is not the case. Everyone has an estate, however modest it might be. Legally, the word “estate” simply refers to what you own and what you owe, even if your net worth is in the red. Estate planning refers to deciding what you want to do with your legal and financial affairs while you are alive and after your death. It is simply not true that estate planning is only for rich people.
Estate planning is for everyone. It is important for you to deal with whatever you have accumulated during your lifetime, regardless of whether it has a higher or lower dollar value than someone else’s estate. The fact that you are not rich does not mean that your spouse or children should be stuck with legal and financial problems after you have passed away.
Money is not always at the root of estate lawsuits. Although it may seem strange, estate legal battles are not always fought over large sums of money. That does happen too, of course, but estate battles are often about personal belongings or household items which have great sentimental, as opposed to monetary, value to the deceased person’s family. You do not have to be wealthy to own family photo albums, mementos, heirlooms, souvenirs, or other important sentimental items.
People will fight to keep family items that have sentimental value, as evidenced by hundreds of disputes every year. The idea that estate fights only happen to wealthy people is completely wrong. We hear more about fights of wealthy families simply because the dollar amounts are so large or the families are famous. Unfortunately, the fights happen in every economic bracket.
If a dispute of an estate cannot be resolved among the people involved, it will likely end up being decided by a judge. This means court fees; lawyer’s fees; accountant’s fees; and miscellaneous costs such as process servers, witnesses, and time off work. If a legal battle does erupt over a personal item, it is possible that a modest estate might be completely bankrupted by fees. A lawyer is probably going to charge the same hourly rate to wage a court battle whether the fight is over a multimillion-dollar property or a family wedding ring that is only worth a couple of thousand dollars.
Looked at in the light of possible bankruptcy of the estate, it becomes even more important for a modest estate to be protected by proper planning.
When thinking about estate planning, people also forget that legal documents reveal much more than simply who gets what from the assets. For example, your will and incapacity documents tell you who your parents have chosen to put in charge of their affairs in the roles of executor, attorney (under enduring power of attorney), and health-care representative. If you do not have that information, the end result will likely be delays and confusion. The information about who is to be given legal authority over someone else’s affairs is extremely important regardless of the dollar value.
4. Thinking They Do Not Need to Plan, Based on Anecdotes
One of the worst things people can do for themselves and their families is to make assumptions about how the law applies to them without finding out how it really works. You cannot really blame people for feeling that they are familiar with legal matters, including wills, because they hear about them all the time. Myths, urban legends, and misconceptions about wills are everywhere. Everyone has heard a few stories in the news or anecdotes during conversations at the office watercooler about sensational estate battles.
Movies, television programs, and novels feature stories about the law, including wills. We have all seen them, as they deal with important, fascinating legal dilemmas and are often extremely entertaining. Unfortunately, these shows, which are, after all, only entertainment and not documentaries, perpetuate fictionalized ideas about how wills work. The fact that it makes a good story does not make it true.
Not everyone can tell what is true and what is widely misunderstood or fictionalized for entertainment purposes. In fact, it is almost impossible. The abundance of fictional and semi-fictional stories about wills leads too many people to wrongly conclude that they are “safe” without taking any planning steps at all.
For example, many people confidently state that they do not need wills because they are married and they believe that their spouse will automatically get everything they own after they pass away. Others believe that if they do not make a will, the loved ones left behind will “know what to do” and will “do the right thing” with the deceased person’s assets. Still others want to leave certain family members $1 because they think doing so will prevent the family member from bringing a lawsuit against the estate. There are dozens of these ideas being passed from person to person.
Unfortunately, none of these are particularly good ideas in terms of using the law to protect your estate and family. Though you may have heard of a case in which it appears that a rule or idea applied and worked a certain way, it does not mean that the same thing would happen to you in your case.
For example, look at a case where there was a question about whether child support paid by a divorced father should continue on after the divorced father’s death. In that case, it turned out that the estate of the deceased father did not have to pay any support after the child turned 18 years old. That was the right decision for that case, but not necessarily for yours. You should not take it as a general rule that no divorced father’s estate ever has to pay support past age 18, because quite often that is not the case. It all depends on the specific facts of each case.
To add to the confusion, laws dealing with wills vary from place to place. There is no one set of laws about wills that applies to everyone, everywhere. Also, laws change over time as governments move with the times or respond to public demand, making it even harder to know what is true at any given time.
The person who assumes that he or she knows the law in detail and knows how it applies to him or her without even looking into it through reliable sources is not doing anybody any favors. He or she will never know about the mistake in the will because the mistake will have no effect until the person dies. However, the spouse, children, or siblings left behind will certainly be forced to deal with that mistake after the person has passed away.
It is always a mistake to rely on secondhand legal advice that was tailored to someone else’s specifics. This includes listening to a friend or co-worker who saw a lawyer about his or her own situation and then tells you about it later, even though his or her situation seems similar to your own.
Legal advice is very fact-specific, meaning it changes from one situation to another depending on the facts of the case. Sometimes only a tiny difference between one person’s estate and another can make a difference in the legal advice given. Your situation is not identical to anyone else’s. Relying on someone else’s secondhand legal advice is similar to taking medicine that is prescribed for another person; it can do more harm than good.
If you see a lawyer or accountant who gives you planning advice and for any reason you do not find the advice believable or correct, you can do the same thing you would with medical advice, which is seek a second opinion.
Basing your decisions on anecdotes, or stories about what happened to one particular individual, is always questionable. Making legal decisions this way can be downright dangerous. For every story you may hear about an estate that went smoothly without a will, there are 50 more stories that deliver the opposite message.
5. Being