How to get started
Ninety minutes, and you will know exactly where your family stands.
The Estate Planning Session is the working meeting where your plan actually gets designed. If you already know you want to plan, you can skip the introductory call and book it directly.
90 minutes · $750 · Do the homework and the fee is credited toward your plan
What it is
A working meeting, not a consultation.
Before the session you complete your Estate Inventory. It sounds like paperwork, and it is, but for most people it is the first time everything they own has been written down in one place: the accounts, the policies, the land, the retirement plans, and the beneficiary forms that move money outside a will entirely. It covers the people too, your family, your heirs, and everyone your plan would need to account for, because an estate is not just assets.
In the session we go through all of it. What you own, how each piece is titled, and who you love. Then we tell you what would happen to every part of it if you died or lost capacity tomorrow. If you have no plan, we cover the plan Alabama has already written for you, because there is one whether you want it or not. If you do have a plan, we read it and show you where your life has moved past it.
Only then do we talk about options and price. You make the decision at the end of the session, with everything in front of you.
What you leave with
Six things, whether or not you hire us.
- A complete written inventory of your estate: every asset in one place, and every person connected to it, your family, your heirs, and the people you intend to provide for.
- A licensed attorney's legal assessment of your estate, built on that inventory: what would happen to each piece of it if you died or lost capacity tomorrow, and our recommendations for what to do about it.
- Your incapacity plan, complete: a General Durable Power of Attorney, an Advanced Medical Directive, and a HIPAA Waiver & Release, prepared from your completed inventory. If you could not speak for yourself next month, someone you chose could.
- The three levels of planning, with what each one protects and what each one costs.
- A flat fee, quoted before any drafting begins.
- The freedom to walk away, if the honest answer is that you need less than you thought.
Choosing a level
Three levels, and you are the one who picks.
Planning is not one size fits all, so we do not price it as though it were. There are three levels. They run from a foundational plan for a younger family whose main concern is naming guardians and getting the basic decision-making documents in place, up to a comprehensive plan for an established family focused on protecting what their children inherit long after they are gone.
What changes as you move up the levels:
- Whether the plan is built on a will or on a trust, which is what decides whether your family goes through probate.
- Whether the funding work is included: the retitling and beneficiary changes that make the documents true.
- How much protection your beneficiaries get after your death, from creditors, from divorces, and from their own mistakes.
- How the plan is kept current as your life changes, instead of aging quietly in a drawer.
For a married couple, comprehensive planning runs between $2,000 and $8,000 depending on the level you choose. Single planning is discounted from there. The session itself is $750. All of it is on the pricing page, including what is inside each fee.
The fee, plainly
How the $750 works, and when it works for you.
Before the session we send you your Estate Inventory. That is the homework, and the whole arrangement turns on whether you do it. Complete it, and the $750 stops being the price of a meeting:
- If you go on to plan with us, the full $750 is credited against your plan fee. The session ends up costing you nothing on top of the plan.
- If we look at everything and conclude that you do not need a plan, or that there is nothing we can offer you, you are not charged for the session at all. You still keep everything the session produced, your inventory, the assessment, and your incapacity documents. We would rather tell you that for free than invent work for you.
- If we recommend a plan and you decide not to move forward, the fee stands, and it bought real work: your complete inventory, a licensed attorney's assessment of your estate, and your incapacity documents. It also stays with you. Come back to plan later, and the $750 is credited toward that plan.
Come in without the inventory done, and the $750 is simply the fee for the session. That is not a penalty for skipping paperwork. The inventory is the raw material: the legal assessment and the incapacity documents are drafted from it, and without it the session can only be a conversation about what we would have found.
What this is not
Nobody is going to sell you anything.
You are the one holding the information at the end of this meeting, which is the entire point. We show you the three levels, what each one protects, and what each one costs. Then you choose. If the level you choose is the smallest one, that is a good outcome.
And if the session shows that your situation is simpler than you feared, we will say so. You will have spent ninety minutes and come away with a full written account of your own life, which almost nobody has.
Common questions
The things people actually ask
Do I have to do the free 15-minute call first?
No. That call exists for people who are not yet sure what they need. If you already know you want to plan, booking the session directly saves you a step, and the session is where the real work happens anyway.
Ninety minutes is a long meeting. Can we do it faster?
Not honestly. The length is the difference between advice and a document order. Most of the value comes from going through your assets one at a time and asking how each is titled, and that is exactly the part that cannot be rushed without producing the errors it exists to catch.
Do both spouses need to be there?
Yes, if you are married. The decisions are joint ones, and a session where one of you has to brief the other afterward tends to produce a plan only one of you understands.
My situation is complicated. Is this still the right meeting?
It is the right meeting for blended families, for unmarried couples, for families with a child who has a disability and cannot risk losing benefits, for business owners thinking about who takes over, and for families with enough at stake that taxes are part of the conversation. Complication is the reason the session exists.
What if I am not ready to decide at the end?
Then you do not decide. You will have the inventory and the numbers, and you can take them home and sit with them. Nothing about the session obligates you to hire us, and the fee follows you: if you come back to plan later, the $750 is credited toward your plan.
What happens to the $750 if I decide not to hire you?
That depends on the homework. If you completed your inventory, you leave with your inventory, a licensed attorney's assessment of your estate, and your incapacity documents, whatever you decide. Beyond that: if we concluded that you did not need a plan, you are not charged for the session at all, and if we recommended a plan and you passed on it, the fee stands but stays on your file, so if you come back to plan later it is credited then.
Why does so much depend on the inventory?
Because it is the raw material for everything else. The legal assessment is an opinion about your actual estate, not estates in general, and the incapacity documents are drafted from the names and details you put down. A session without the inventory can only tell you what we would have found. That is why completing it is also what earns the fee credit.
Ready to book the session?
Ninety minutes, $750 credited toward your plan when you do the homework, and you leave knowing exactly where your family stands. Not sure yet? The free 15-minute call is on the same page.