Regardless of whether you’re just starting your career or a sophisticated high net worth business owner, it’s likely you don’t know how to compare attorneys, what questions you need to ask, or what to look for when shopping for an estate plan. As a result, most people simply pick up the phone and ask a few attorneys how much they charge for a “Will” or “Trust.”   

If you’re shopping for an estate plan based on getting the lowest cost possible, please be aware that this is often the fastest path to leaving your family with an empty set of documents (maybe in a beautiful binder, but not worth the paper they are written on) that won’t work for your family when they need it most.

Unfortunately, we see the negative effects of cheap estate planning all too often. When family members come to us in their moment of grief with that fancy binder that sat on the shelf for years, full of out-of-date estate planning documents, and find themselves stuck in what could have been an avoidable court process, or even conflict, when that’s exactly what their loved one thought they had paid someone to handle for them.

Here Are 5 Reasons Why Price Shopping For The Cheapest Estate Plan Is Likely To Leave You With A Plan That Won’t Work For Your Family

1 | Attorneys have to make a living too. Most bill by the hour and it’s common for attorneys to charge $300-$400 for an hour of their time today. When it comes to estate planning, you will often be charged a “flat fee,” but that fee corresponds to how much time they can devote to your family and preparing your plan. That’s why the least expensive plan often isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. 

The truth is a lawyer can’t afford to provide anything more than standard cookie cutter documents when you’re paying $499 (or even $1,500 or $2,000) for a Will, Trust, or estate plan. It doesn’t afford the lawyer the time and opportunity to get to know you, understand your family dynamics, educate you on the unlimited options available to your family, or provide you with a customized and well thought out estate plan. This business model doesn’t work for the lawyer and won’t work for you. 

2 | “Estate planning” is often offered at a cheap price by financial professionals who want to get their hands on your “assets under management.” They’re not necessarily prioritizing your family or keeping the people you love out of court or conflict, and they may not even know how.

When your estate plan has been sold by an investment advisor as part of your financial advisory and retirement support services, their focus isn’t typically on getting to know you, to understand your family’s legal or relational dynamics, or on preparing a comprehensive and customized estate plan. Their focus is often on maintaining your financial assets and they don’t have the experience of knowing the pitfalls which often flare up after the death of a loved one. As experienced and “relational lawyers,” we’ve got specific expertise and training in pre-emptively identifying potential for family conflict and heading it off before it becomes an expensive problem. We’ve seen it all when it comes to families getting stuck in court in both “probate” and “divorce” and that experience can help in designing a plan that prevents your family from court and conflict in both areas of the law. 

3 | If you’re shopping for the cheapest estate plan, you will most likely receive a form where your information is simply copied and pasted into the document. It’s extremely common in the world of estate planning. Forms and documents won’t be there for your family when you can’t be -- you want to leave your loved ones with a trusted advisor to rely on. Someone who has taken the time to prepare a customized and well thought out plan for your family. Preferably with an attorney whom you have built a relationship with during your lifetime and who has met your loved ones, and they already know and trust.

Working with a lawyer who focuses on “the best documents” at the “lowest price” or doesn’t charge enough for their time cannot provide more than form documents. These days, especially with the rise of AI, template form documents are free for anyone to use, which makes it difficult to know how those documents are handled when it comes to protecting the people you love.

Shopping around for the least expensive plan may get you the cheapest documents, but those documents won’t be there to guide the people you love when they need someone to turn to in a crisis or grief. We will be and that’s why we have built into our process that your family will have regular and ongoing meetings with our firm at no charge for the life of your plan. This is what sets our firm apart from a majority, if not all, of the options out there. Not to mention that when your children are old enough, we will bring them into your plan review meetings with our office, so they understand your plan, why you have selected the options you have, and they know what to do when the time comes to put your

plan into action.         
 

4 | My mother wisely told me that in life you always get what you pay for. When it comes to estate planning, unfortunately it’s your family that will pay the price. Traditional law firms usually use generic forms and documents. In the legal world, these “Trust mills” and are typically firms that drafts plans, but don’t take the time to ensure your assets are owned correctly or your beneficiary designations stay up to date over time. You might think that’s malpractice, but it’s not. It’s common practice and leaves your family at risk if, and when, something happens to you! That’s why we have meetings scheduled after completing your plan to ensure that you are titling your assets in the way they are intended to be within your estate plan.

5 | An estate plan isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it one time transaction, it needs to stay updated and evolve with your family as there are changes in your life, the law, and your assets.

There’s currently more than $58 billion in unclaimed property held in departments of unclaimed property across the United States. Yep, that is billion with a “B”. Assets often end up there when someone dies or becomes incapacitated, and their family isn’t aware that the account, asset or property even existed. We have a proven process of assisting our clients in creating an inventory of their assets and giving them the tools to update it throughout their life. Unfortunately, most attorneys don’t implement this into their “plan” or even tell you to do so. In the end, your family may lose out and your assets may end up being owned by your State Department of Unclaimed Property if you’ve shopped around for the cheapest estate plan, rather than having a comprehensive plan that will work for the people you love.

Is Something Better Than Nothing?

In most areas of life, having “something” in place is often better than nothing, but this is not one of those cases. Having a “something” plan, can leave your family holding an expensive, or even empty bag, when it’s too late for you or them to do anything about it. It’s risky business to leave your loved ones with a set of documents you aren’t sure are going to work, and our guess is that you love your family too much to put them in that position.  

The bottom line: don’t waste your time shopping around town for the cheapest plan possible. You don’t want the cheapest doctor, operation, or insurance policy for your family. The same logic must be applied to estate planning, you want a plan that will work for the people you love when they need it most.

If you already have an estate plan in place that you shopped for based on the price and are concerned you may have gotten a set of documents that won’t serve your family when they need it most…call us and ask about our 50-point assessment. We can help review your plan to make sure your loved ones won’t get stuck with an expensive, painful and unnecessary court process, or even the loss of assets, before it’s too late.

Contact us at (630) 233-4223 to schedule an appointment. We begin our planning process with a Family Wealth & Legacy Strategy Session, during which we’ll go over the 10 things that everyone needs to know about estate planning and you’ll learn more than 99% of the public about how estate planning can affect your family. Not to mention, you’ll be more financially organized than ever before, and you will be in a position to make informed, educated choices about the right plan for your family based on your unique circumstances, instead of simply shopping around for the cheapest estate plan.

This article is a service of Family Wealth & Legacy Legal Solutions (FWLLS). We do not just draft documents; we ensure you make educated, informed and empowered decisions for yourself and the people you love. That's why we offer a Family Wealth & Legacy Strategy Session™, during which you will get educated and begin to prepare to avoid life’s most common legal problems and get a plan in place to make the best possible choices for the people you love. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a Family Wealth & Legacy Strategy Session and mention this article to find out how to get this $750 session at a significantly discounted rate, or even for free.