Texas Estate Planning Attorneys and Lawyers
Referrals are the easiest way to find a quality estate planner to assist with your will or living trust. Most people have a number of sources for these referrals:
- Family members - Has anyone else in your family prepared their estate plan?
- Insurance agent - An insurance agent's primary responsibility is protecting their client's assets and a quality insurance agent will ask during an annual review if you have an estate plan in place. They also sell life insurance which often benefits from having a trust in place to control distributions for young beneficiaries. Hence, insurance agents often can provide feedback on the quality of service and cost several local estate planners.
- Financial planner - Financial planner's deal with client assets on a daily basis, many of which deal with beneficiaries. Like insurance agents a good financial planner should be able to provide background on several local estate planners.
- Accountant - Accountants are in another industry dealing with a person's assets. Accountants often have a good network of insurance and financial advisors to reach out to if they do not have a first-hand referral.
- Other types of attorneys - Attorneys often pick a specialty as the primary focus and often can refer someone in another area of law.
Texas Estate Planning Attorneys and Lawyers
Most estate planners have websites detailing the areas of expertise and you can often learn a great deal about the way an attorney approaches estate planning by how information is explained on their website.
Several suggestions for a web search include:
- ("Living trust" or "last will" ) + your city
- "Estate planner" + your city
- "Estate planning attorney" + your city
An Estate Planning Attorney Or Lawyer
Whether using referrals or the web to find your estate planner, it helps to be able to ask meaningful questions while interviewing estate planners to increase the likelihood of an effective plan meeting ALL your family's needs.
Some questions one might ask include:What fees are charged for changes and amendments?
If a living trust is prepared, do you prepare and record deeds for in-state real estate to transfer into the living trust?
May sample documents be viewed during a consultation?
