Estate Planning Fees: Generally
Estate Planning Fees vary depending on the complexity of your plan. Estate planning fees are determined relative to the amount of estate work involved. If a person's estate is Will Based (doesn't include a trust plan), the estate planning fees can be very inexpensive. If a person estate includes a basic trust than the estate planning fees may also be relatively inexpensive.
Estate planning fees increase when we incorporate advanced asset protection or draft great detail into an estate planning document. If you want to restrict a beneficiary's access to the estate inheritance, or protect the estate inheritance from divorcing spouses, Medicaid, Bankruptcy or creditors, your estate planning fees begin to increase.
Estate Planning Fees: Simple Will Estate Planning Fees
Every person needs a Will, Powers of Attorney & Living Will. Since 90% of the attorney's time is spent meeting and collecting client information, it will generally take the attorney the same amount of time to draft a Simple Will as it would to draft all the other documents also. This should always be the the case because the attorney's estate planning fees, whether transactional or hourly, are based on estimates of time. Consequently, its almost always more cost effective to purchase the aforementioned documents with a Simple Will.
Because of the aforementioned, we only prepare Simple Wills in a package.
Estate Planning Fees: Complex Wills, Detailed Wills & Testamentary Trusts Estate Planning Fees
Complex Wills, Detailed Wills & Testamentary Trusts require more time to prepare because they are being prepared to address a specific issue. Because Living Trusts are almost always superior to these more expensive Wills, frequently it makes more sense to draft a Living Trust instead (exceptions exist; e.g., Will w/ testamentary trust for Medicaid planning).
Consequently, if the estate planning fees for your Will are excessive, and you haven't ruled out a living trust for planning reasons, you should really consider incurring a little more estate planning fees to eliminate or reduce future probate costs, estate administration fees and probate fees. By spending a few hundred dollars more now on your estate planning fees, you may likely save many thousands of dollars on later costs, fees and taxes.
The following Spring 2012 Promotion outlines our estimated estate planning fees and costs for two of our basic estate plans. The estate planning fee promotion is limited in scope and duration.