Most surveys conducted regarding estate planning, indicate that most people generally don’t have any estate plan. I really believe that the main reason for this is the lack of education, because people don’t understand their options. Most people want to be able to get an affordable estate plan but given the cost, they tend to do nothing.
The way I was trained when I was new to this industry, was to work on a flat fee basis. Attorneys tend to charge billable hours, but most estate planning attorneys work on a flat fee. Over the years, I have come to believe that families should not just plan for who gets their stuff when they pass away. They should rather plan for what happens if they get really sick before they pass away. This is because the government rules require you to go broke if you need long term care in a nursing home.
It is estimated that one in three of us will likely get dementia and need long term care. If you consider that nursing homes cost $150,000 a year, most middle class families cannot afford this. The wealthy people aren’t worried about the cost of care in a nursing home, and the impoverished people get Medicaid benefits to pay for care.
Looking out for the Middle Class
This is why I focus on wanting to help the middle class families, who likely have a home and some savings, but very often end up going broke paying for long term care. Fortunately there are things we can do to protect your home and money. We use irrevocable asset protection trusts to do this. You can do a Will, a revocable living trust, and an irrevocable trust and have the whole set of documents, or the full toolbox. Once people get to understand how those ‘tools’ work, a lot of middle class families want to protect themselves, their family and their money, if they end up needing long term care.
Most people don’t go to the estate planning law firm once a week or even monthly. Estate planning is something you do, and every five or 10 years you should check back in with a lawyer to update it. Imagine if you had to stockpile your toolbox with the right tools, but you could only go to the hardware store once every 10 years. In one hand you have a hammer and in the other hand is a screwdriver, and you’re trying to guess which one you’re going to need. You don’t know what you will need to do in the future, so it makes sense to get a fully loaded toolbox for all your needs. Instead of making our clients choose between having a Will or a trust when they don’t know what the future holds, we equip them with all the documents.
The Question That Changed Everything
Just over a year ago, I was explaining to my business coach that I had been selling wills and trusts to people who didn’t want to pay for a better plan. Due to the cost of doing appropriate planning, most people opted for a basic plan. Now those people are elderly and have become sick. The adult children asked me why their parents are not properly prepared for long term care. My answer is that I showed their parents various options but they decided not to pay for a better plan. Unfortunately it’s a conversation I’ve had too often over the years. When I was explaining this problem, my business coach asked me “How Do You Sleep at Night?”
While he knew that my mission in life is to help protect people, the problem is unresolved. If people did not take advantage of the opportunity to have the best plan, I was not helping them as needed. It rocked my world when he asked that question. I went on a mission to find out how we can do better planning for people, while making it affordable. That’s when we came up with the concept that we now use. We realized that among our team of lawyers, we were having the same conversation repeatedly with people. At Sechler Law Firm, we believe in providing education, which we also did with our one-on-one education meetings. However, we decided to offer our Three Secrets to Protect Your Legacy Workshop which you can register for on sechlerlawfirm.com/workshops.
What You Will Learn At The Workshop
At the workshop we talk about wills versus trusts. We also talk about revocable trusts and irrevocable trusts, taxes and probate avoidance. We discuss long term care and we talk about maintaining control. You will learn all you need to know to do a proper estate plan. We’re no longer doing one on one consultations for the most part, which makes it more efficient and allows us to keep our costs low. Our clients progress from the Three Secrets Workshop, to the Blueprint Workshop, where they focus on the details of estate planning.
Most law firms host seminars and after the seminar, you get a consultation. However, what transpires in that consultation, can be discussed and handled in a class. As a result, we have two workshops or classes where we offer the fully loaded toolbox. You get every document at a price that you can afford. This is because we are more efficient with that lawyer time and have been able to cut our price.
I believe that what we’ve uncovered is probably the best way to do estate planning. You get a better estate plan than what we’ve previously done, at a better price than we’ve ever offered. It’s been transformational for us and our clients.
Watch out for the next blog to read about our Red Wagon Club offering. Find out why you would want to join!
