Need An Estate Plan?

Great question! We seek to use flat fee billing for most services we provide in the firm because everyone is anxious about the expense of legal work. Attorneys can be expensive, and unlike doctors for whom you can have medical insurance, no one has legal insurance.

The Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Kentucky forbids the staff of a law firm from quoting a fee. Only the attorney is permitted to do so after understanding your specific needs. Instead of hourly billing where the clock is running for all the time we are working for you (and you will never know the cost until the work is complete), we prefer the flat fee arrangement so that you know the price of a service up front, before we begin.

We can tell you this, our prices for service will always be less than the price of doing nothing! In fact, in our more advanced legal work, where prices can run between $7,000 to $15,000 per case for complete asset protection and long-term care planning, that cost will actually save or make you money. Even basic estate planning with a will/power of attorney/living will that can cost several hundred dollars per person, is a huge savings over the court costs and lawyer’s fees, if you don’t plan ahead. Yes, this can be expensive, but the value of paying $10,000 to save $100,000 from complete loss of all your assets & home, makes great financial sense for most people.

Absolutely! Your will determines where your possessions and finances are distributed after you pass away. However, most people who do not do more comprehensive planning with us have nothing to pass along to heirs once they die. Why? Because the extreme cost of long-term healthcare, which in Kentucky is more than $80,000 per year (and on average the length of stay is 3.8 years), results in excess of $328,320 per person during their lifetime. Long-term healthcare planning is planning to preserve your estate; will-based planning assumes you will have an estate left once you pass. Of course, we can help you with both.

Hands down, the most important documents you need is a Power of Attorney (POA, more on the importance of the POA below in #5).  The second most important document is a Will, and the third most important is a Living Will.

Without a Will the State of Kentucky determines who gets your possessions when you pass away. A Living Will places the person you chose in charge of your medical decisions of Life Support and Feeding Tube treatment (rather than the doctors) so if in the informed perspective of the person you designate removing that treatment is better for your care and comfort, it may be removed. Otherwise, the doctor has no choice but to keep those things in place until you pass away. This can mean prolonging days of care (which can at times be life-saving) than at other times it may hinder a more peaceful last days with family.

Honestly, maybe not. And, if you don’t need to do any planning, I am going to tell you. I would never lead you to pay for a service that you don’t need. But it is rare that a person doesn’t need some sort of estate planning, even if it is just a POA. Even if all you have is a couple of hundred or couple of thousand dollars in the bank, it needs to be protected so that it will be there to pay for your funeral or cremation, or for your heirs, or for your spouse. Doing nothing risks dying penniless and saddling others with paying those final bills for you.

Hands down, the most important document you need is a power of attorney (POA). This allows another person to make decisions if you are incapacitated. Imagine for instance you have a car accident and you are unconscious. When the doctor does not have a person (even the spouse) who is legally authorized to approve or disapprove an action, the doctor makes that decision for you. Without the POA you and your loved ones are bystanders as the doctors call the shots.

Think about another concern: you are on a trip, you lose your wallet, and you do not have any way to get to important documents while away or to get money to return home. The POA can act on your behalf to get money sent or access to a passport or proof of identity and access to medical records. This can be the difference of days of frustration, compared to an hour for those that are prepared and have planned ahead.

I get it, “no one likes an attorney until they need one.” But whatever Hollywood has caused us to feel about attorneys and the legal system, we are here to help, and your experience with us will be nothing but a relief and enjoyable. The reality is, those that try to manage through these important life issues without a skilled professional end up with a huge mess. Every week we see clients who attempted the do-it-yourself method, who downloaded something from the internet and are standing in court with a will that will not hold up to thle Laws of Kentucky (no matter what that website tells you, remember you get what you pay for). Or even worse, the person we sit down with who did go to their family attorney for that POA and the bank won’t take it because of the inadequate wording for the specific problems we face in our senior years.

Why do you need an attorney? Because these matters are too important to not get them right! Our consultation is a short meeting to allow you to see if you can trust us. If you cannot determine from that meeting that we are going to put your mind at ease, that we have the legal skill and insight to solve your problems that are more complex than a Google search, then please don’t hire us, go on down the street until you find someone that does provide that confidence and peace of mind to you. Not getting this right when you are planning to protect your lifelong savings, home, and retirement can cost you tens upon tens of thousands of dollars. Isn’t that why you hire an attorney? We want to save you from losing!