Choosing the right estate planning lawyer today can make a world of difference years from now. After all, making the decision to put into place important protections for yourself and your family begins with a foundation. Be sure your chosen legal advocate can recognize what you need today and can anticipate what your future needs might be.
During an initial consultation, our Vermont estate planning lawyers encourage potential clients to ask questions and to also ask for clarification when they’re unsure of any aspect of their estate plan. It’s true that nearly every estate shares a few crucial documents, but if there’s one vulnerability that was overlooked, it could affect anything from Medicaid qualification to the tax burdens left for your family to shoulder.
Your Estate Planning Attorney and Commitment
Be sure your estate planning attorney focuses primarily on retirement considerations, elder law and of course, traditional estate planning. Many law firms specialize in several legal sectors, but you don’t treat your estate planning as an afterthought and neither should your lawyer.
A great legal partner is willing to work with your financial planner, especially when it comes to retirement planning. Be sure their willing to approach the “team effort” with confidence and a willingness to step up to the plate. If your choice is resistant or outright refuses, you should probably keep looking.
Other Legal Services
Ask what other services are offered to clients. Our team offers a digital library of white papers, blog posts and other estate planning articles. Further, we host estate planning seminars throughout the year so that our clients are afforded the opportunity to catch up on various changes in the law. It’s also an opportunity to reiterate our commitment to our clients.
Don’t forget the specific questions, either. From Medicaid planning to long term care planning to putting into place powers of attorney, the last thing you want to see is your lawyer struggling to explain to you something he may not understand.
From a logistics perspective, is the staff helpful? What about the office hours? Are they compatible with your needs and if not, is the law firm willing to accommodate your non-traditional work schedule? Are you able to schedule an appointment with a reasonable turnaround time or must you wait weeks and months just to meet with your lawyer?
Priorities
Finally, and while this may seem obvious, it’s important that you don’t compromise some points. Specifically, you want to know your lawyer is respectful in that he doesn’t talk down to you and doesn’t provide “across the board” canned replies to your questions.
We know that it’s more than getting a potential client in the door. For our team, it’s about building solid relationships with our clients so that they are comfortable in their decisions. After all, they’re trusting us with some of the most important decisions they will make in their lives. Settling for anything less than stellar representation simply isn’t an option.
If you’d like to learn more about our team of estate planning lawyers, we invite you to contact us today. We’ll schedule a complimentary consultation and you can see for yourself the difference a committed team makes.
Ellen LaPlante
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