Articles

Estate Planning is not about documents – by Vaughan de Kirby

When most people think of estate planning, the first thing that they imagine is some official piece of paper. For those who have already gone to see an estate planning attorney, what comes to mind is probably not a single piece of paper, but stack of them—a fancy looking binder that their lawyer sent them home with. In other words, estate planning, in most people minds, is about documents. It’s about filling out the right documents at the right time in front of the right person. Once that’s done, there’s no need to think about it again.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Estate planning, if it is to be effective, must a continuous process. Every time your life changes in any of the following ways, so too must your estate plan:

• as you have more children
• as your children’s needs and situations change
• as you acquire assets
• as your marital status changes
• as your relationships develop
• even as your view of life and the world changes

Your estate plan also must change to reflect new developments in the law. The body of law that relates to estate planning is large and confusing. Most importantly, it changes often, and your estate plan must change along with it.

Unless your estate plan changes apace with your life and the law, it would be all but irrelevant if you suddenly passed away. It wouldn’t protect your loved ones when they needed it most. It wouldn’t protect your wealth from the leakages of probate court and estate taxes. It wouldn’t protect your children’s inheritance from creditors or liability. Your estate plan, which you created to make sure that your loved ones would be cared for if the unthinkable happened, would completely fail. Rather than leaving your family with a tremendous gift, you would leave them with a tremendous mess.

The worst part is that lawyers in the estate planning industry encourage the assumption that estate planning is mostly about documents. Many estate planning attorneys brag about the volume of clients they have, which can number in the thousands, even the tens of thousands. It is simply impossible for one attorney to provide the continuous counsel and guidance that is required to ensure that their clients’ wealth would be protected and transferred to their loved ones. They sell their clients an expensive stack of papers, along with a false sense security. The reality is that the expensive stack of paper that many people have tucked away somewhere is probably not worth the paper they’re printed on.

That’s why I say that estate planning is not about documents; it’s about relationships. In order to do my job—to make sure that my clients’ wishes are carried out and that their families are taken care of—I have to make sure that my clients’ estate plans continually reflect the most significant changes in the law and their lives. And to do that, I have to be there for my clients in a way that the vast majority of lawyers in the estate planning industry aren’t willing to be. I believe that helping my clients develop a successful estate plan means being a trusted advisor. And that’s why I call myself a Personal Family Attorney.