Be sure to keep these clauses in mind to make sure you understand what you are doing, said Ivan Hernandez, co-founder of Omnia Family Wealth. The representation can be complex.
“The dream is to have everything on one page,” he said.
For this reason, some trust and estate attorneys stick to long memos to summarize estate plans and point-by-point discussions with their clients. James I. Dougherty, a partner at law firm Withersworldwide, said he’d sent clients illustrations for conference calls but kept coming back to memos to set it all out.
“If you have something where the parents’ estate plan outweighs the distribution of money to one child over another – say, because a child received a down payment on a house – we talk about it and write it down in a memo,” he said.
However, with large lots, litigation is always an issue. “Down the street you don’t want to be on the stand and say,” That stuff in green will go here, “said Mr. Dougherty.” You want that long memo. “
You can tweak things in the spreadsheet, but your attorney will need to incorporate the changes into your estate documents for them to take effect. (This is where the practice differs from adjustments to investments. Your advisor can make these changes on site.)
At the end of the day, Mr Hendry said, he, like everyone else, wanted the plan to work now on paper and later in practice.
“If I didn’t have this flowchart, I’m not sure what I would do,” he said. “I’m not going to sit down and read 500 pages of documents. This gives my wife and I a sense of security that we are in control of this situation and can interpret it as best we can. “
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