Why Work with the Law Offices of Vaughan de Kirby, A.P.C.

We at the law offices of Vaughan de Kirby practice estate planning differently. We know that the way most lawyers approach estate planning, though lucrative for them, will neither meet the needs nor fulfill the wishes of their clients. Our whole approach is based on doing estate planning right—in a way that will actually accomplish its fundamental goal: ensuring that your loved ones are cared for if you’re no longer around to care for them yourself.

But in order for you to appreciate how we’re different, we have to describe what the “traditional” experience with an estate planning attorney is like.

The traditional experience begins with a visit to the lawyer’s office. After a short conversation with the lawyer, everything seems complicated and confusing. But the lawyer seems smart and qualified, so you nod and answer questions as if you understand everything. Because you want to do the right thing for your family, you have the lawyer prepare the documents for you. You sign the documents and leave the lawyer’s office relieved that you’ve finally gotten the whole estate planning thing squared away. You take your fancy planning binder home, stick it on a shelf or in a drawer, and check estate planning off your to-do-list.

The next time you’re at the bank, you suddenly remember that the lawyer said something about moving your bank accounts into the trust. It wasn’t really clear then what this meant, and time has only made your lawyers advice seem to make even less sense. So you call your attorney, hoping to get some answers, but instead you get an answering machine. You don’t receive a call back for several days, and by that time your eagerness to work on your estate plan has taken a back seat to more immediate concerns. However, several weeks later, you get a bill in the mail for some $70 for the 15 minute phone call you had with your lawyer. You make a mental note: don’t call lawyer.

One day, you read in the news that there has been some change to tax law, and you wonder if the new law might affect your estate plan. But you figure that your lawyer would contact you if there were something that needed to be addressed. And, plus, you don’t need another bill.

As time goes on, your concern about your estate plan fades in the distance—like a new year’s resolution you forgot you made. Though your estate plan has stopped changing, your life certainly hasn’t. Recently, you refinanced your house, or sold it and bought a new one (But, unfortunately, you forgot that you were supposed to let your lawyer know, and to make sure that you kept the title in the name of the trust). Your children seem to have grown up so fast, and you wonder where all that time has gone. (However, because your children are now older, your guardianship decisions are now completely outdated.)

It’s not until you become incapacitated or die—and your family finds the binder you stuck up on a shelf several years before and never looked at again—that they’ll realize your plan is so outdated that it has nothing to do with your life, your assets, or the law.

Your family doesn’t know where to turn or what to do, so they contact the same lawyer you used to prepare the documents, who is as happy as can be to probate your assets, which never made it into the trust.

This description might sound like an exaggeration—the exception rather than the rule—but I assure you, it’s not. When you understand the mindset of most estate planning attorneys, you’ll realize that this kind of experience is entirely predictable. The estate planning industry is actually built on the assumption that all clients are in their 70s or 80s, people whose life won’t really change before they die.

We at the law offices of Vaughan de Kirby are devoted to helping people who actually stand to lose the most without an estate plan: those with growing families, whose lives may change significantly on their way to success.

We understand that, unless your estate plan changes along with your life, your assets and the law, your estate plan—an expression of your best intentions—will completely fail, leaving your family with a terrible mess to sort through.

We urge you not to wait. Give your loved ones the gift of proper estate planning.

OUR FIRM HELPS YOU PREPARE FOR LIFE

What makes our firm different is that we were built with the needs of growing families in mind. We understand you are BUSY, you are growing, you are planning for a life of prosperity and you value ease, convenience and efficiency. You want to know you’ve made the best decisions for your family and that your plan will work when your loved ones need it most. You want to make sure your children would be taken care of in the best way possible and will be prepared to receive your wealth if anything happens to you.

In addition to planning for United States Citizens we are uniquely experienced in meeting the critical needs of couples where one or both spouses are not United States Citizens.We bring the the experience of our representation of thousands of immigration clients and their families to the practice of Estate Planning. In Estate Planning for non-citizens the laws are different, the taxes are different, guardianship is different and all of this must be understood if lawyer is going to meet the needs of non-citizen and the families they love.

We’ve developed unique systems to give you the same access to a Personal Family Lawyer as was previously only available to the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Sam Walton so you can have the guidance you need to build and maintain a life of prosperity and wealth.

We encourage communication with our clients. In fact, we’ve thrown out the time clocks so you never have to be afraid to call with a quick question (or even a not so quick question). Everything we do is billed on a flat-fee basis, agreed to in advance, so there are never any surprises.

We have a whole team to serve you. When you call our office to ask your quick question, you won’t have to wait hours or days for a phone call back. You’ll get your question answered, right away. And, if you need to schedule a more in-depth legal or strategic call with your Personal Family Lawyer, a call will be scheduled when you are both available and ready for the call so we can make the very best use of your time and not waste your time by leaving voicemail after voicemail back and forth.

And, we ensure the most important details of your planning are followed through on and your plan continues to work throughout your lifetime.

We have a contract with a full time “funding coordinator” to ensure your assets are protected throughout your lifetime and none of your assets will end up going through a long, expensive court process or being lost to the state because they were missed after your death.

We’ve created unique membership programs to keep your plan up to date year in and year out as well as give you access to our Trusted Team of Legal Experts for guidance on ANY legal or financial matter. One day you will need a lawyer. I don’t know why and I don’t know when, but when you do, we will be there for you.

Lastly, we believe your financial wealth is only a small part of your overall “Family Wealth” which is made up of your far more valuable, Intellectual, Spiritual and Human assets – who you are and what’s important to you.

Most estate plans are only able to transfer your financial wealth onto the next generation. The intangible nature of your much greater wealth has made it difficult to capture and it is most often lost when someone passes. How much do you know about your grandparents values? Their most prized personal possessions? How they felt about you? What they had learned during their lifetime?

If you are like most people, you know very little. But, the wealthiest families capture these assets and pass them along right with their financial wealth. And, that’s now available to you with the Law Offices of Vaughan de Kirby, A.P.C..

We’ve developed a tool that allows us to pass on your whole family wealth, including your Intellectual, Spiritual and Human assets. I can’t go into all of the details here, but we’ll definitely talk about when you come into meet with your personal family lawyer.

We look forward to seeing you and caring for your family soon!

Kindest regards,

PS – if you think this all sounds expensive, well, you are right and you’re wrong. I can guarantee you that if you qualify to meet with a Personal Family Lawyer, that planning is substantially less costly than it would be for your family if you died with a plan that didn’t work or if you didn’t have a plan in place at all. And, I’ve never had a single family who believed in this kind of planning and wanted to put it in place for their loved ones leave my office because they couldn’t afford it. We’ve made creative financing available to our clients because we know that this planning is the foundation for a life of success! For more information on how we're different, please read some of the articles that I've posted on our site.