Eugene: Well, this morning, We’re talking about Estate Planning and the important role it plays in so many peoples lives ahead here to walk us through Attorneys Greg McIntyre and Brenton Begley from Mcintyre Elder Law, before we start talking about estate planning. Lets talk about a typical day and what that looks like for you guys.
Greg McIntyre:
Starting off the morning with a morning meeting, making sure we are all together, that we are moving the right direction, knowing exactly what we have to do that day, maybe getting into some drafting work, working on litigation, there may be some mediation or trials for the attorney. Moving on to meeting with the clients, there may be an estate planning issues, benefits issues, probate issues, and then making sure we have meetings with our team in each department every day to make sure everybody knows everything that is going on, and the attorneys are there to answer any questions and then getting back with clients. You know, I’m there until 7,8,9 at night calling clients back and working on cases and thats my day. Brenton is an early morning guy. He takes the first shift, then I take the second and a half shift.
Brenton:If you get a call at 7:00am it’s probably from me.
Eugene: Lets talk a little bit about that, how long does it take, so a client comes into your office, how long does it take to draft an estate plan? How long does it take?
Brenton: It depends on what we are doing, there are many estate planning documents that we could do for a client, many different plans. We try to custom tailor every plan to each person. Usually it takes a couple of weeks for a full plan because we work with the client to really customize it. We don’t want to knock out something in a day or in a few days and have it be wrong. We want to take the time and really dig in with the client. It usually takes a couple of weeks with the client from the beginning consultation to the end when we sign and record everything. We provide the witnesses and the notaries and everything like that so it’s finished at the signing date and in between that time is a couple of weeks.
Eugene: Greg, do you encourage that clients bring their family folks and family members there, particularly family members of older folks that may be losing some of their cognition?
Greg: Yeah you know, a lot of the time, it is a family affair and I encourage that. Bring family members, bring people you trust to the consult and let’s talk about it. Bring your current estate planning documents, lets review those. If there are any cognitive issues, certainly we want to be aware of that and we also want to be aware and be sensitive to the fact that someone may be subject to influence from a family member to and if we sense that then we are going to send those people out of the room. I’ve done that many times.
Eugene: you have this misnomer that estate planning was only reserved for people that are rich and famous.
Greg: Okay, you see people pass away prints Aretha Franklin, other people with no estate plan, no will. People who really get hurt are people in the middle who maybe have worked, scrimped, saved and have a house, some retirement, long-term care situation can take everything, if they don’t have an estate plan and proper tools in place to be able to manage their lives and protect assets, and pay for long-term care. Those things need to be thought through to avoid losing everything you’ve worked for.
Eugene: And Brenton, he was talking earlier about communication. You were saying communication is extremely key.
Brenton: The client needs to know what is going on, in any case that you are doing for them. if were doing an estate plan for them, you wanna dig in and find out what their wishes are, because ultimately what we wanna do is make sure their wishes are fulfilled, make sure we protect their dignity. They have hired us to do a job, and we want to make sure that we stay in contact. Especially if it’s litigation or something like that. People don’t know what the court does, it’s kind of a mystery so, having the attorney or paralegal call and explain those things is really important.
Eugene: And Greg, you offer a free consultation, how can people get in touch with you about that and take advantage of that?
Greg: They can call 1-888-999-6600. Somebody real will answer the phone, with a kind voice. no robots answering the phone at our office. Or if you do want a robot, you can get on our website and schedule it right online at Mcelderlaw.com
Eugene:Thank you all for being here.
Greg: Thank you, Eugene
Greg McIntyre
Estate Planning & Elder Law Attorney
