The Plan Ahead Process
Most firms stop at step three.
Five steps from “we should really do this” to a finished, funded, maintained estate plan. The two steps with names nobody else uses — Fund and Maintain — are the two places plans quietly fail.
01
Assess
Find out what you actually need.
Every plan starts with your family, your assets, and what you want to happen. Start with the free two-minute assessment, or go straight to a consultation. Either way, this step is about your situation — not a sales pitch. By the end you'll know which documents you need, and which ones you don't.
02
Design
Plain English, and a flat fee before any work begins.
We talk through the design: who's in charge if something happens, who inherits what and when, and what happens in the hard cases nobody likes to think about. No legal jargon. If you don't understand a piece of your own plan, that's my failure, not yours. You get a flat-fee quote before any drafting starts.
03
Sign
Documents done right, typically within two weeks.
I draft your trust, wills, powers of attorney, and healthcare directives, and we review them together before you sign. Typical turnaround is about two weeks, not months. You leave with a complete, organized portfolio binder — every document, plus the guides your family will need to actually use the plan.
04
Fund
The step most firms skip — and the one that makes it work.
A trust only controls what's actually in it. Signing is not the finish line. Your home, accounts, and business interests have to be retitled or coordinated with the plan. An unfunded trust is an empty box, and it's the single most common estate planning failure in the industry. Recording and filing for one property is included in the published estate-plan fee.
05
Maintain
A plan that stays current as life changes.
Children grow up. Businesses get sold. Laws change. Families move. A plan written ten years ago and never touched can be almost as risky as no plan at all. When something changes — birth, death, divorce, new property, new business — you call, and we fix it. One year of minor updates is included.
Your plan isn’t done when the ink dries. It’s done when it works — and keeps working.
Questions about the process
Most families go from first conversation to a signed, organized binder in about two weeks. Funding the remaining accounts can take a little longer, and we stay with you until it’s done.
Ready when you are
Let’s put a real plan in place.
A thirty-minute conversation. No pressure, no hourly meter. We’ll figure out what you actually need.