As the need for affordable legal services becomes even more important in today’s world, it’s becoming more and more common for people to opt into group legal insurance offered through their employer. These group insurance plans provide free legal assistance for a variety of services where law firms have entered into agreements with the insurance company to provide legal work at a reduced fee.

While legal insurance seems like an easy way for your family to save on legal expenses, it’s often inadequate for creating the kind of estate plan you really need to protect your assets, your choices, and your loved ones. In fact - the type of estate plan, will, or trust created through legal insurance programs could leave your family with a big mess.

In this article, we’ll explore the reasons estate planning requires more time, attention, counseling and guidance than your group legal insurance coverage will allow. We’ll also help you understand the potential pitfalls of using legal insurance for your estate plan and what your options are to ensure your family, wealth and legacy are properly protected, without leaving a mess for your loved ones.

One Size Doesn't Fit All

When it comes to estate planning, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all plan. If you have loved ones, assets and want to ensure that both are taken care of with a plan that will work for your family, there’s so much more that needs to be done to ensure you fully understand your ALL of your options, the pros and cons for each, and how to properly manage your plan after it’s signed. The traditional estate planning model will almost always address at least four (4) key documents in a plan–a will, trust, health care directive, and power of attorney– yet, there are additional pieces of planning that are extremely important for your family. Depending on your families’ specific dynamics, the nature of your assets, and what it is that you want to happen after your incapacity or passing – there’s a series of documents and systems that need to be implemented to ensure that your plan will actually work when your family needs it. Not to mention, the four (4) standard documents really need to be specifically tailored to meet the specific needs of your family.

Each person and each family is unique. We all have certain circumstances and family dynamics that will require discussion, counseling and guidance to ensure that your plan will for your family the way you want it to, from special needs, government benefits, the age of our children, grandchildren, spouse, their financial wherewithal, level of responsibility, state of their marriage, or whatever the specifics may be. Your financial, medical, and personal needs must be taken into account to design a comprehensive plan that will serve you now and distribute your assets in the way you want after you’re gone, to minimize taxes, attorney’s fees and pitfalls, all while ensuring the best use of your resources during your life.

To pull back the curtain, when using a legal insurance plan, the insurance company contracts with the lawyer and demands that the lawyer supply a specific set of documents for a set (and significantly reduced) fee. The lawyer will help to ensure you have the 4 key documents of an estate plan, but the amount provided to the lawyers is so low, they simply don’t have the ability to properly get to know your family, educate them on all of their options, and to design a comprehensive and well-thought-out estate plan. Instead, the lawyer has to systemize the process through questionnaires and automated systems to provide you with a generic set of documents that are unlikely to work for you the way you want. In the end, it will almost certainly guarantee your family will end up lost and confused when something happens to you, and your family needs the support and guidance on how to implement the plan you created.

To create a plan that will truly work for you and your family, you need to begin with an evaluation of your assets and family dynamics. Estate planning is a complex and confusing subject, and our experience is that families need a proper education on the law, tax consequences and your specific situation to ensure you get the best plan for your family. All of this takes time and when it comes to lawyers, the only commodity that we have is our time. This is why a one-size fits all solution won’t work for your family and why we don’t offer this option, but instead take our clients through a four-meeting process that involves a comprehensive educational and design meeting with you, where we will begin by looking at everything you have, everyone you love, and how to best care for them when something happens to you. 

The cookie-cutter estate plan you are likely to receive through group legal insurance simply won’t include the comprehensive considerations and counseling necessary to deliver a plan that will serve you and your loved ones in the way you would want, while keeping your family out of court and conflict.

Legal Insurance Nickel and Dimes You and the Lawyer

Many group legal insurance plans boast free legal services after your deductible is paid, but what isn’t revealed is the limit of what’s actually covered for free.

Only certain types of legal services are covered under group legal insurance plans. Estate planning is frequently one of them, but the kind of plan you will receive is a merely a set of documents, very similar to what you could create yourself online. You’re not going to receive a customized, well-counseled and thought-out plan that will be sure to work when your family needs it most.

Plus, some items that are essential to the creation of your plan, like notary stamps or fees to file documents with your county and state, are not included in the covered service and are instead charged to you as an extra expense.

More importantly, most legal insurance plans have annual limits to the amount of claims you can file for each type of service. For example, creating a Will or Power of Attorney may only be covered once a year, but updating your estate plan mid-year if your circumstances change or someone dies may not be covered. A legal insurance covered plan will not keep up with those changes, the lawyer isn’t provided enough of a financial incentive to provide you with ongoing guidance over time, so while you may receive documents, those documents may quickly become outdated, obsolete and aren’t likely to be what your family needs when something happens to you.

You Need a Trusted Advisor and Counseling-Based Planning Approach

Creating an estate plan isn’t just about legal documents or passing on your money after you’ve died. It’s about making wise decisions about the use of your resources throughout your life, leaving your assets to your loved ones in a way that creates a legacy, and creating the best reality possible for yourself and your loved ones. Our goal is to ensure that your family is left with an example of wise decisions and financial planning, instead of a cautionary tale to learn from the hard way.

As your dedicated Personal Family Wealth & Legacy Lawyer, we take a thorough and holistic approach to serving your family by going the extra mile and taking the time to work closely with you to understand what matters to you, your family's dynamics, values, and the aspirations you have for your family as a whole. Then, we review and consider all of your assets, including the intangible assets often left out of planning. Then, together, we create a truly personalized plan that takes into account every aspect of your family's well-being in the short term and for the long haul.  In addition, we provide you with proven systems to manage your children’s well-being in the event of an emergency, your personal assets, property, how you wish to be remembered and the memories you wish to preserve for future generations.

What’s more, your needs and your family's needs will change over time. You’ll buy and sell your home, move financial accounts and your financial wealth will change over time.  You may have another child or become a grandparent. Your son may start a business, or your sister may develop a disability.

That’s why it’s crucial to coordinate your estate plan, so it will keep up with and adapt to the changing circumstances of your loved ones, so that your wishes are honored, and your assets are protected no matter how their situation changes over time.

To do this, we have developed a process to guarantee that we are in regular contact, so that we can provide you with personalized guidance at any stage in life’s journey. We offer this service with all of our plans, at no additional charge, but legal insurance providers simply aren’t willing to offer enough compensation to provide you with all of these services in with an insurance plan. 

Our planning process includes creating an inventory of all of your assets and we review your entire plan, including all of your decisions and your asset inventory for free every three years to make sure the plan we created for you will continue to serve you and your family in the way you intended. By doing this, we can identify any areas of your plan that need to be changed and any new assets that need to be coordinated into your plan.

Legal Insurance Plans Lack Long-Term Considerations

Estate Planning is a journey over a lifetime. As your finances, needs, and wishes evolve over time, your estate plan must adapt accordingly. Relying solely on group legal insurance won’t provide the ongoing support and guidance needed to address changing circumstances over the years.

Under group legal insurance, your choice of attorneys is limited to the firms that have contracts with the insurance company, and there is no guarantee that the attorney you worked with this year will be available to help with changes to your plan next year. My friends and colleagues often opt-in and opt-out of these plans on a yearly basis, merely experimenting to see how they go and quickly getting out of them when they realize there’s not enough profit coming from joining. 

Not to mention, your children will grow into adults. That means you’ll lose your ability to make decisions for them and they won’t be covered under your plan. Meaning you won’t be able to coordinate your family’s estate planning needs as a “participant,” under the plan.

Time-sensitive changes to your plan that are needed as a result of a sudden emergency or death in the family may be impossible to carry out when using an attorney through group legal insurance. Instead, you want to work with an attorney who knows your family’s story and can pick up right where you left off, allowing them to quickly and effectively address any needed changes to your plan with a simple phone call.

Trusted Expertise in Estate Planning

While group legal insurance may seem like the ultimate way to protect your bank account balance and cover your loved one’s future legal needs, sadly, the services available through these group insurance plans simply aren’t comprehensive enough to ensure you and your family get the support and guidance they need, and deserve.

Instead, it’s crucial to work with an experienced estate planning attorney who gets to know your family and develop a personal relationship, so they  can guide you every step of the way.

Your estate planning journey deserves personalized attention, compassion, understanding, and unwavering dedication. That’s why we have dedicated our practice to using an approach to estate planning we call Family, Wealth & Legacy Planning, allowing our office to skillfully guide you through a comprehensive decision-making process, while looking ahead to proactively avoid issues in the future.

If you want to make sure your loved ones are always cared for no matter what the future holds, schedule a phone call with me and I’ll share all the details of our Family Wealth & Legacy Strategy Session, which kicks off our planning process. This meeting is no-commitment educational strategy session, where we will give your family a crash course on everything related to estate planning and allow you to decide if you need to get a plan in place and what plan is appropriate for your family. 

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.