The Importance of Finding the Right Estate Planning Attorney (Transcript)
D. "Rep" DeLoach III, Estate Planning and Board Certified Elder Law Attorney
The difficulty is part of all this when you're dealing with your aging loved one or you're just thinking about your own pre-planning, it's very difficult to get good information. And we know that for a number of different reasons is sometimes people try to do their estate planning documents online, or they go to LegalZoom, or they get the form out of a book, or what have you. Sometimes people go to bad attorneys.
There are a lot of attorneys out there that say they do estate planning but they don't really know the intimate details of elder law, Medicaid, Medicare, long-term care, they don't know all these aspects. They just hang their shingle out and say they do estate planning. And it's not always easy to find a good attorney. Let's be realistic. But hopefully you've done the research to find a good attorney.
You can look online and see what other clients would have experienced in the online reviews. On our website we have a lot of great articles that I've written, and we also have two books that I wrote as well. I wrote a book on Medicaid and asset protection planning. Then I also wrote another book on estate planning as well. And when I wrote these books, I just think about who I am in life as well as I want to print clear information, lots of options.
And the things that people just don't know and this is that people go sit down with an attorney and they don't always get great advice. Or even if they got as much advice as they could, as things go stale and people forget what they said or what the attorney told them or what have you. Ideally with the books that I've written, available for free to download on our website, is that'll help you out and help you know what you don't know, the things that you should consider.
And the other thing is really is when you've done the research and for instance, reading our books in advance, then you would always go sit down or you can sit down with us or sit down with another attorney. But coming in and having some good questions to ask and how it's going to apply because it's a good attorney who's going to apply your factual situation, your assets, your goals with your estate plan and how it's all going to work together. There are some things that are intuitive and some things that are easy, but there's also some things that are difficult. And we know this is just because you sat down with attorney doesn't mean your estate plan is really correct. How's your assets work with your estate planning documents and other things.
