Estate Planning
Legal Fees
Based on your Questionnaire, we will provide you with an estimate for legal fees. The nature of your assets and your plans for distribution determine the complexity of the legal work required, and thus the fee. If you get the estimate and decide not to proceed, or not to proceed right away, that's fine. Even if you don't complete your estate planning work with Miller Mayer, you may find that working through the Questionnaire is a useful exercise.
Filling Out the Questionnaire:
- How precise do I need to be in describing my financial assets?
- If I have trouble answering a question on the Questionnaire, what should I do?
- Why does the Questionnaire ask about my family members?
- Why does the Questionnaire ask about my family’s assets?
- What is a Power of Attorney?
- What is a Health Care Proxy?
- What is a Living Will?
- What is a HIPAA Release?
- What is a Designation of Agent to Control Disposition of Remains?
Other Questions:
- Will you store my estate planning documents for me?
- How often should I update my estate planning documents?
- What if I move?
Filling Out the Questionnaire:
Please include all substantial financial assets, but don’t worry about getting the amounts correct to the penny; ballpark figures are fine.
Feel free to skip the problem spot, and when you submit your Questionnaire to us, let us know which question presented a difficulty and why.
We need to know of your family members in order to ensure that we craft an estate plan that will accurately and efficiently carry out your wishes. Also, after a person dies, certain family members must be notified before an executor can be appointed by the Surrogate’s Court. We find that it is helpful to gather this family information directly from clients.
- What if the addresses of my family members change? Do I need to revise my estate planning documents?
No. We include addresses only as a means of identifying the people you have named. Even if a person’s address changes, your estate planning documents will continue to be valid.
We need to understand your assets before we can help you craft a plan for the disposition of those assets. Certain types of assets are treated differently by estate law than other types of assets. Additionally, the overall value of your estate can have major implications for estate tax planning.
A Power of Attorney is a document that allows you to appoint one or more people to act as your agent for various types of financial and legal actions. Especially in situations where you cannot act for yourself, this can prove an extremely useful tool. It is, however, essential to select your agents with the utmost care, because you are giving them the power to act on your behalf.
A Health Care Proxy is a document that allows you to appoint an agent to make health care decisions for you in the event that you are unable to make your own health care decisions.
A Living Will is an expression of your wishes regarding your medical care.
A HIPAA Release permits the professionals involved in your health care to disclose all of your medical information and records to the people you choose to authorize, such as the health care agent named in your Health Care Proxy.
This document permits you to leave special instructions related to the disposition of your remains or to designate a person who will make those decisions for you, and can help avoid any misunderstandings about who will make this important post-mortem decision.
Other Questions:
Yes. We are happy to provide secure long-term storage of the originals of all wills, trusts, and related documents.
We recommend that you review your estate plan to confirm that it still satisfies your desires every four or five years—and whenever you experience a major life event, such as a birth, death, marriage or divorce in the family.
Estate planning documents validly signed in New York are honored nationwide and in most foreign countries. However, some jurisdictions do have rules about how much of an estate must be passed to a surviving spouse, children, or other relatives.