Trust planning is about more than documents. It’s about control, protection, and peace of mind.

At DuBois Law Group, we help clients of all wealth levels — from a house and some savings, all the way up to high net worth — create trust plans that clearly reflect their wishes, protect their assets, and make things easier for their families. Whether your goal is to avoid probate, plan for incapacity, protect a beneficiary, or coordinate long-term care planning, a properly designed plan involving a trust is the way to make all of that — and more — happen.

Our Approach

We take the time to understand your family, your assets, and your concerns. After gaining some familiarity with your situation and goals, we explain options in plain language and

help you choose the structure that fits. The result is a plan that is not just legally sound, but effective in the real world, seamless and unobtrusive for your life, and flexible enough to change if and when you want.

A well-done trust plan reduces uncertainty, and allows you to move forward with confidence that you’ve protected what’s most important, for yourself and the people in your life that are the most important.

What Is A Comprehensive Trust Plan?

Not all trust plans are created equal. In fact, many lawyers that claim to “do trusts” don’t plan at all — they just change the names from the last trust document they did, and charge you hundreds or thousands of dollars for what was basically just word processing.

That may give you a legally valid document, but it almost never works the way you want it to.

A TRUE PLAN INVOLVES:

1.    INITIAL CONSULTATION

• Our team sends you an easy, straightfor-ward questionnaire so we have the relevant information to have a meaningful, thorough discussion with you, where we do a significant amount of listening.
• We give a well-thought-out recommendation of what planning tool(s) will address your and your family’s situation, explained in an easy-to-understand way.
• We describe your options for levels of ser-vice, each with a fixed cost, and you choose the plan that best fits your goals and bud-get. Our goal is to protect your money, not spend it unnecessarily and without strong, obvious value received in return. While we believe our recommendations tend to make sense, we believe more strongly that it is ultimately up to the family to decide what they are most comfortable with.

2.      PLAN DESIGN AND CREATION

• A plan design session where each piece of the plan is figured out together between you and our team, with a mutual under-standing of how those pieces will fit together, and most likely play out in the real world. It is also critical to discuss backup options for when certain pieces may not go as planned.
• Not just a trust, but a suite of important documents:
  • The trust document
  • Companion Last Will & Testament
  • Power of Attorney
  • Health Care Proxy
  • Living Will
  • HIPAA Release
  • Deed(s) to real estate
  • Other important miscellaneous docu-

Of course, some plans merit other documents tailored toward other specific situations.

• Reviewing together all the documents that are included in the plan.

3.      ASSET ALIGNMENT AND BEYOND

• A conversation and advice about how to line your assets up with the plan: not just your house, but bank accounts, brokerage or investment accounts, retirement accounts, life insurance, other real estate, business interests, etc. Legal documents create the structure, but in order to avoid probate and protect assets, the assets themselves must directly be considered and handled in cer-tain ways. (Note for clarity: This almost never means taking assets away from your chosen bank or financial institution.)
• Full disclosure about your options to later update your plan, and what to expect, and how much to expect to pay, for your family to administer your plan upon your disability and death.

Why Choose A Comprehensive Trust Plan?

We approach our planning based on three guiding principles:

1. Your family and your life savings are important, and deserve careful attention and a specific, well-thought-out plan. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but it shouldn’t be treated like an afterthought.
2. People come Your home, your savings, your other assets all do have monetary value, but that value is meaningless if it’s not benefiting you and your family in the right way. And it is certainly meaningless if it doesn’t benefit you and your family at all, but instead goes to taxes, court costs, long term care costs, unwanted beneficiaries, divorcing in-laws, or unnecessarily high legal fees. We protect money, but we do it to honor and respect the people who earned it and the people it will help.
3. One-shot, one-document legal services are not plans. Plans have a process involving gathering information, considering and dis-cussing it, taking action, and then reviewing and adjusting as necessary. Investing some time and money to do it right is the proven way to have the best result. We think you and your family are worth it, and if you do too, we’d love to help you make that happen.

For more information, visit www.dubois.law or call 845.420.7999.

It can be confusing, but our job is to make it simple.