How to Prepare to Meet with an Estate Planning Lawyer
By Barry Zimmer on May 25th, 2017 in Estate Planning
Meeting with an estate planning lawyer is a smart choice to ensure that you can protect your legacy and provide for your heirs. An estate planning lawyer will do many important things to help you protect your assets and determine who should inherit and how they should inherit. Your attorney’s job is to make the estate planning easy and to take care of the technical details on your behalf. You will just need to be prepared to work with your lawyer to make it possible for your attorney to facilitate a successful estate planning process.
If you are getting ready to meet with an estate planning lawyer for the first time, there are a few simple things that you may wish to do in order to make certain that the meeting is as productive as possible for you.
Your attorney will let you know what specifically you ought to do before the meeting and what, if anything, you should bring with you. However, if you want to prepare in advance, the tips below can help you to get a good start.
How to Prepare for Your Meeting with an Estate Planning Lawyer
If you have set up a meeting with an experienced estate planning lawyer, some of the things that you may wish to do to get ready for your meeting include:
- Writing down your estate planning questions. It is very common for people to have many different things they wish to ask their estate planning lawyer. However, when you actually meet with an attorney, it is easy to become overwhelmed with all of the information and the questions and to end up not remembering everything you wanted to ask. If you have a list of all of the different questions and concerns that you have, your attorney can answer them for you.
- Writing down your estate planning goals. Do you want to leave money to charity? Are you concerned about what is going to happen to your children if something happens to you before they become adults? Are you worried about irresponsible heirs losing money? You likely have many different reasons for making an estate plan. If you write down your goals and are prepared to discuss them with your lawyer, your attorney can immediately hone in on different ways you can achieve your plans.
- Listing your assets and beneficiaries. You don’t have to do this before your first meeting, but you are going to have to make a list at some point of what property you own and what you want to have happen to that property. You may as well get started so you will be able to provide your lawyer with more info on what you hope to accomplish when making your estate plan.
By taking these simple steps, you can have a productive and positive first meeting with your estate planning attorney and you can ensure that you make valuable use of your time. Your lawyer will be able to get started right away on helping you to use Ohio’s legal tools to plan for your legacy.
When Should You Meet with an Estate Planning Lawyer?
Preparing in advance to meet with an estate planning lawyer is important to make the most of your meeting. It is also important to make smart choices about when to schedule a first meeting with an estate planning attorney. A lot of people believe that only seniors or sick people need to worry about making an estate plan, but this is not the case.
Life is full of uncertainties and you never know when something unexpected could happen to you. If you pass away before your time and have not made plans to protect your assets, avoid estate tax, and facilitate the transfer of assets to heirs, your family could lose out on a part of their inheritance and you could lose the chance to control your legacy. You need to have a plan in place, which reflects your current wishes, as soon as you have assets you care about and people who you want to provide for after you are gone.
Getting Help from An Ohio Estate Planning Lawyer
Zimmer Law Firm has extensive experience providing comprehensive help with estate planning to clients in Cincinnati and in surrounding areas throughout Ohio. To find out more about the services that we can offer to help you provide for your family and build a strong legacy, you can download our estate planning checklist. You can also give us a call at 513.721.1513 to speak with a member of our legal team and find out more about the ways in which we can put Ohio legal tools to work for you.