Estate Planning, Family Law, Trust Administration, and Probate in Santa Barbara County

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Top 5 Questions To Consider Before Hiring A Lawyer For Your Estate Planning Needs

We know discussing topics like death, incapacity, and other potentially frightening life events, with someone like an estate planning lawyer may feel intimidating or even morbid. Take a  deep breath and relax … it doesn’t have to and shouldn’t be that way.

Hiring a lawyer to help you make wise decisions for life and death can be the most empowering choice you ever make for yourself and your loved ones. The way we explain it to our friends and family is, “estate planning isn’t about planning for your death, it’s about planning for your life.” So, with that frame in mind, let’s talk about how to choose an estate planning attorney, because we aren’t all cut from the same cloth.

The right lawyer will be there for your family when you can’t be, so you want to understand who the lawyer is as a person, not just an attorney. Of course, you’ll also want to discover the services your lawyer offers and how they run their business.

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Five Questions To Ask Before Hiring An Estate Planning Lawyer - Part 2

The sad truth is most lawyers do a terrible job of staying in regular communication with their clients. Unfortunately, most lawyers don’t have their business systems set up for ongoing, proactive communication, and they don’t have the time to really get to know you or your family.

If you work with a lawyer who doesn’t have systems in place to keep your plan updated, ensure your assets are owned in the right way (throughout your life), and communicate with you regularly, your estate plan will be worth little more than one you could create for yourself online — and it’s likely to fail when your family needs it most.

Think of it this way: Yes, your estate plan is a set of documents. But more importantly, it’s who and what your family will turn to when something happens to you. You want to work with a lawyer who has systems in place to keep your documents up to date and to ensure your assets are owned in the right way throughout your lifetime. Ideally, the lawyer should get to know you and your family over time, so when something happens, your lawyer can be there for the people you love, and there will already be an underlying relationship and trust.

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