3 Tips for Your Estate Planning Consult

What are the things you need to bring to your estate planning consultation to help you get the most out of it?

Hey there, my name is Ron Payne. I’m the CEO and managing partner here at Apple Payne Law in Kernersville, North Carolina. And we focus on estate planning, probate, and family law cases.

I wanted to answer the question for you today: What are the things you can bring to your estate planning console to really help you get the most out of it?

It’s pretty simple and pretty straightforward. First, we need your information. You and your spouse have full legal names, as well as the names and legal names of your beneficiaries who you want to inherit things or who you don’t want to inherit things, if that’s the case.

The second thing we want you to bring is a list of all your key assets, we define that as roughly worth anything worth more than about $5,000. Let us know. Now, a lot of things like your bank accounts, your IRAs, your pensions, retirement plans, etc.—that stuff’s not going to pass through probate, but it is part of your estate and what you’re leaving to your heirs.

It’s really helpful for us to know who you want that to go to and kind of what you’re planning for this, so we can plan either for it or around it as the case may be. That doesn’t mean we don’t want that stuff going through the will. But we do want to make sure that it’s up to date. And we can give you some tips on how to best make sure that gets to your heirs the way you want it to.

If you set up a consultation with us, we’ll email you our intake form for estate planning. A lot of the questions on those intake forms that most law firms have won’t apply to you. But if you want to set up an appointment with us, and you fill that information in advance, it is so helpful. That way our paralegal and the attorneys, myself, or others can make sure to ask you about all of the assets you have and make sure we understand kind of what you want the flow of your estate to be. Last but not least, bring a list of your questions.

We want to answer the questions. We know how estates go. And we know what the most common questions are.

One of my favorite things is kind of explaining the will and estate planning process to our clients. But if you’ve got specific concerns, questions that you want to ask about, shoot them to us in advance if possible, or bring them with you to the console. That way, we can make sure to specifically answer the questions that you have, so you don’t get home and go “Oh man, I wish I would have asked about this” or “I wish I would have thought to think about this.”

Now of course you can follow up with us after the consult. We do all of our estate planning on a flat-fee basis. And what that means is you can email and ask as many questions as you need to. It’s not important to us that we spend this much time or that much time on your case. What’s important to me as the attorney is that I want to get your estate plan right.

And so if I know what your questions or concerns are, we’ll make sure to take care of those and I don’t want you worrying about well if I ask him one more question, is that going to cost me an extra nickel or an extra dollar? Because I emailed him another question?

Not with us.

Everything’s flat fee-based, and we’ll answer as many questions as we have, and that you can come up with to make sure that you feel comfortable and knowledgeable that your estate is going to be handled the way you want it to.

So I hope this has been helpful in helping you prepare for your estate planning consultation. If you’d like to set one up, you can schedule a consultation online or you can give us a phone call at (336) 281-6928. Of course, like and subscribe here on YouTube for more helpful legal tips. I hope this has been helpful and have a great day.