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The diversity of personal and family situations requires consideration of a wide range of estate planning options. Catalyst’s team of trusts and estates attorneys assist clients with all aspects of estate planning to help ensure the intentional, meaningful, and efficient management and transfer of property and wealth. We do this by focusing on your personal values and family goals when preparing custom plans for your individual circumstances.
For a standard fixed fee, Catalyst prepares foundational estate planning documents, including revocable trusts, wills, designation of guardians for minor children, durable powers of attorney and advance directives for health care decision making. For those clients with revocable trusts, Catalyst works with clients to plan for distribution of retirement benefits and ensure assets are titled in the name of your trust. Catalyst also follows up with clients at least once every two years to revisit your estate plan at no additional cost.
Catalyst often provides fixed fee estate planning services for complex estate matters, including analysis of options to minimize estate and gift taxes, business succession planning, and other considerations for the wide variety of assets found in a modern portfolio. Catalyst offers fixed fees, charged on top of the basic plan fee, for many add-on services, such as:
Generally, the fees increase with the additional complexity of your estate planning needs. Only for the most complex estate and business succession planning matters does Catalyst charge our standard hourly rates for estate planning services.
The Catalyst estate planning process includes three in-person meetings with a goal of completing your plan within two-months of hiring the firm.
Meeting #1: Review your financial and personal information, discuss your priorities and goals, and review options for estate tax minimization and asset protection. Based on our conversation, a Catalyst attorney makes recommendations for how to proceed and provides a corresponding fixed fee for the scope of work.
Meeting #2: Following the initial meeting, Catalyst prepares drafts for your review at our second meeting. We then review the drafts together, discuss operative provisions in plain English, answer any questions you may have, and note any changes or corrections needed to finalize your drafts. We discuss updates to beneficiary designated assets and, for Trust Plan clients, review steps needed to properly fund your trust.
Meeting #3: At our final meeting, we sit down with a notary and two witnesses and guide you through the formal signing process, which includes updates to beneficiary designations and many, if not all, of the trust funding tasks for a Basic Trust Plan.
Reserve your Complimentary 15-Minute Consultation to speak with an experienced and knowledgeable attorney about our fixed-fee packages or how we work with families on complex estate and business succession planning issues.