Attorneys aren’t exactly known for being the warmest, most caring and wonderful people on the planet. Attorneys might even be described as being a little bit like the Grinch from Dr. Seuss’s story “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” whose heart was two sizes too small.  The Grinch is miserable and hates the Christmas holiday, and sometimes attorneys seem to be unhappy.  Attorneys are described by adjectives other than warm or caring, using words like ”aggressive” and “uncompromising” or “unfazed” and “unflappable.” While these are the types of descriptions you may look for in an attorney who is defending you from a wrongful criminal accusation, or representing you in a tough negotiation of a business contract, they aren’t always the words you want to have to describe your estate planning attorney.

Partially, this is because estate planning tends to be a less combative area of law, and partially because estate planning tends to be where attorneys and clients work together to make an estate plan that reflects the client’s desires and wishes.  Certainly an estate plan needs to be properly set up to survive challenges and attacks from someone who disagrees with the terms of the estate plan, but the process of setting up an estate plan isn’t supposed to be an adversarial contest between a client and the attorney, but rather a collaborative approach to accomplish what the client wants.

 

Your Estate Plan Needs to Reflect Your Wishes

In the Grinch story, at least in the movie versions, a little girl named Cindy Lou Who asks many questions of the Grinch, pestering him and annoying him.  I do try to not be too annoying, even though whenever I meet with a client to start the estate planning process, I ask a lot of questions of the client.  I ask about their family situation, their financial situation, and about who they want to leave assets to when they pass away, and who they want to leave in charge of things.  I understand that every potential client has a unique family and financial situation, and that the estate plan we create needs to reflect that uniqueness.  A will or a trust is the way to set up an estate plan, but that doesn’t mean they are all the same.

The will or trust that we set up needs to reflect your family situation.  If you have minor children, we will need to prepare for what happens if you are gone and someone still needs to raise the children to adulthood.  In this case, one of the most important decisions to make is who will raise your children.  If you have grown children, then who will raise the children is less important, but how assets are split matters more than who will raise children that are already grown!  This seems like an obvious point, but it still needs to be made.  Your own family and financial situations dictate how to structure the will or trust to accomplish your goals and objectives.  I ask many questions of my clients to determine how to best structure an estate plan that fits their needs and accomplishes what the client wants.

 

What You Want May Not Always Be Obvious

I do find that if I just ask a client what they want to do in their estate plan, I get a lot of blank stares in return.  Most people don’t have a ready answer to what their estate planning objectives are or what their estate planning goals are, so we discuss things in somewhat simpler terms.  I ask who they want to leave their “stuff” to in the will or trust.  Most people can tell me who should receive their assets, and many ask if I mean just “stuff,” (as in household or personal items) or other asset types, like investments, or real estate.  From there, we can have a discussion about whether those assets should be given to different people or the same people.  While most people I meet have strong opinions on who they want to receive assets, I find having a discussion around it to be quite revealing.  People will share their personal stories and the reasoning behind why they want to leave certain assets to certain people to me during these conversations.  That helps me to know why someone wants to do certain things, and helps me create a more effective estate plan.

Of course, people can change their minds over time, and so an estate plan can change with them.  I have had clients who cut off a child in an estate plan, and then reconciled with that child and re-included them in a changed estate plan.  I love those types of changes.  And conversations can change as well.  I wrote a blog post about dealing with the impact of death, and had a client request I change the content because it felt too personal to that client.  I had no intention of causing a client distress, so I changed the blog post.  I know the re-written blog post did not have the same effect as the original post, but I also know it was the right thing to do and I do have a heart and want to take care of my clients.

 

Your Estate Plan Does Need to be Done Right, and With a Heart

In setting up your estate plan, I do need to set things up correctly under Colorado law.  No matter how well intentioned my efforts may be, we still need to follow the rules and regulations of estate planning laws in Colorado, and we need to set up the estate plan following the requirements of Colorado law.  Failure to meet the required technical standards could result in challenges to an estate plan that might alter the estate plan from what you want as a client, and that defeats the entire point of having an estate plan.  Most estate plans do not cause problems or strife, but when an estate plan is not viewed favorably by everyone, or someone thinks things are unfair, challenges to the estate plan arise.  Your will or trust needs to reflect your wishes, and be firmly within the bounds of the law, so that your wishes are honored and carried out, even if those wishes do not meet the exact expectations of everyone else.

In the story of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” the Grinch sets out to steal all of the Christmas decorations and presents.  He does so, but then understands that Christmas is not what he thought it was, and the story says his heart “grew three sizes that day” and he learns to love and celebrate with all the townfolks.  You may not be able to have your heart grow three sizes, and my heart may also not grow three sizes, but we can certainly work together to ensure that your estate plan helps bring people together and remember you fondly.

Your estate plan is the last gift you will leave your loved ones, so the more you can make the estate plan work for you and for them, the better you will leave everyone when you leave them behind.  To make an appointment with an attorney who has the right size heart, click the button below.