A little over twenty years ago, my wife and I purchased a couch.  It was our first major furniture purchase together and we paid something like $400 for the couch, which was HUGE money for a young couple like we were.  My wife was working while I was in law school, but it was still a big purchase.  The couch was delivered to our apartment and we spent many, many nights sitting on it – watching TV, playing with our puppy, or even watching the snow fall during a storm that brought three feet of accumulated snow one winter’s day.

The couch made the trip from that apartment to our first townhouse, and then moved with us to our current house.  It eventually was not the featured piece of furniture, and as it broke down, it found its way into the loft, just for a place to put it and a place to sit.  We knew we needed to replace the couch, but never found a new couch to replace it until we found a great replacement couch while shopping for Christmas presents.  The new could cost more than $400, which isn’t surprising, but twenty years of inflation, and slightly more expensive tastes meant we could get our new couch.  We purchased the couch, and then paid the extra cost to have the couch delivered.  My wife and I have found our marriage does much better when we don’t try to move furniture together!

The delivery guys struggled to get the couch up our stairs, and nearly gave up several times.  The delivery guys talked about how it might be necessary to take down our banister to get the couch in…it is a heavy couch and even has a memory foam sleeper mattress that can pull out, making it even heavier.  Eventually, they did get the couch up the stairs and into the loft, but one spindle of our banister got broken.  We took this as a sign we should move up our timeline to replace the banister, which had been on our to-do list for several years.

We have a friend who is a general contractor and she had time to replace our banister in the weeks following the couch’s delivery.  We looked at possible designs, and thought about what we wanted to do.  We ended up choosing a design of our own making, borrowing elements from different designs we looked at and mixing in our own ideas.  I am sure you can already anticipate my next sentence before I write it: This is like estate planning – not all estate plans are the same and they incorporate elements of other estate plans and have your own unique touches thrown in.  The process of getting the supplies for the banister is a story I will cover below, but it wasn’t the simplest of projects.  Home improvement projects rarely go completely smoothly, as most of us know.

Certainly setting up an estate plan can also have its bumps along the way.  For us, having a good general contractor helped us to achieve the goal of getting a new banister, and it kept us moving along the path.  A good estate planning attorney can do that for you in setting up an estate plan.

Should It Really be That Hard to Find Supplies?

When we chose a design for the spindles of the new banister, we chose metal spindles and we chose to use a pattern of the spindles that necessitated three different spindles – one a straight design, one with a twist / spiral incorporated, and one with a “basket” type of design.  We chose these spindles because we liked how they looked, and it made our banister unique.  We didn’t know how much work it would be to find all of the spindles.  We went to one Home Depot store, but could only get about half of the spindles we needed.  So, we headed to another Home Depot location, and got most of what we were missing, but it took a third location to complete our purchases of supplies.  Home Depot had the supplies we needed, but not all in one location.

Sometimes I have people call me and ask about estate planning, and they seem to want me to do just one part and tell me where they can do the rest of the work on their own.  I often tell them that I do offer comprehensive estate planning services and that I can handle the full estate plan for them.

Like Home Depot, I have many locations, but unlike Home Depot, I don’t have my supplies and inventory spread out over those locations.  I bring my knowledge and experience of estate planning to wherever I am and I share that knowledge and experience with my clients, so they don’t have to go all over the place to get what they are looking for.  I can share my knowledge and use it to my client’s advantage.

 

Having a Contractor Saved Me A Lot of Time and Effort

The general contractor we had saved us a lot of time and effort in replacing the banister.  While I could pick my own design for the spindles on the banister, I have never replaced or built a banister, so I would have been trying to learn how to do it on the fly, and I am certain the banister would not have looked as good as it does had I done it all by myself.  We leaned on the skill and craftsmanship of the contractors to make the banister look property and professionally built, not the do it yourself (DIY), with obvious mistakes that I would have done.  Our general contractor knew what they were doing, and it showed in the quality of work on the banister.

I find the same is true of estate planning.  I have many years of experience in preparing and setting up estate plans.  I can use that knowledge and experience to help you get your estate plan properly set up.  If you want to set up your estate plan in DIY fashion, you are welcome to do so, but I think that the knowledge and experience I have in setting up estate plans can avoid many mistakes, and prevent misunderstandings and conflicts in the future.  I want to help you do your estate plan right, and I can help your estate plan work properly in the future.

 

Getting it Right is Awesome!

It took the general contractor 5 days to build our banister and get the finishing touches right.  I contrast that with the 5 months my neighbors across the street took to get their banister re-done when they did it on their own.  I realize my neighbors were only working on the banister after a normal work day, or on the weekends, so time was less available, but I appreciated not being in a construction zone for months!  The shortened time frame let us live our own lives and do what we needed to do with our time with minimal interruptions.  I can help you get your estate plan done in a similarly efficient manner.  Just because I have more experience and a better understanding of the necessary process, I can speed up the estate planning process for you.  We can get your estate plan right, and make it look right, as well as get your assets to the right person.

I probably cannot make your estate plan pretty – it will just be printed words on paper, but it will work out for you beautifully, kind of like how my banister turned out.

If you would like me to help your estate plan turn out as well as my banister, please make an appointment by clicking the link below.