How We're Different

We at the law offices of Vaughan de Kirby practice estate planning differently. We know that the way most lawyers approach estate planning, though lucrative for them, will neither meet the needs nor fulfill the wishes of their clients. Our whole approach is based on doing estate planning right—in a way that will actually accomplish its fundamental goal: ensuring that your loved ones are cared for if you’re no longer around to care for them yourself.

But in order for you to appreciate how we’re different, we have to describe what the “traditional” experience with an estate planning attorney is like.

The traditional experience begins with a visit to the lawyer’s office. After a short conversation with the lawyer, everything seems complicated and confusing. But the lawyer seems smart and qualified, so you nod and answer questions as if you understand everything. Because you want to do the right thing for your family, you have the lawyer prepare the documents for you. You sign the documents and leave the lawyer’s office relieved that you’ve finally gotten the whole estate planning thing squared away. You take your fancy planning binder home, stick it on a shelf or in a drawer, and check estate planning off your to-do-list.

The next time you’re at the bank, you suddenly remember that the lawyer said something about moving your bank accounts into the trust. It wasn’t really clear then what this meant, and time has only made your lawyers advice seem to make even less sense. So you call your attorney, hoping to get some answers, but instead you get an answering machine. You don’t receive a call back for several days, and by that time your eagerness to work on your estate plan has taken a back seat to more immediate concerns. However, several weeks later, you get a bill in the mail for some $70 for the 15 minute phone call you had with your lawyer. You make a mental note: don’t call lawyer.

One day, you read in the news that there has been some change to tax law, and you wonder if the new law might affect your estate plan. But you figure that your lawyer would contact you if there were something that needed to be addressed. And, plus, you don’t need another bill.

As time goes on, your concern about your estate plan fades in the distance—like a new year’s resolution you forgot you made. Though your estate plan has stopped changing, your life certainly hasn’t. Recently, you refinanced your house, or sold it and bought a new one (But, unfortunately, you forgot that you were supposed to let your lawyer know, and to make sure that you kept the title in the name of the trust). Your children seem to have grown up so fast, and you wonder where all that time has gone. (However, because your children are now older, your guardianship decisions are now completely outdated.)

It’s not until you become incapacitated or die—and your family finds the binder you stuck up on a shelf several years before and never looked at again—that they’ll realize your plan is so outdated that it has nothing to do with your life, your assets, or the law.

Your family doesn’t know where to turn or what to do, so they contact the same lawyer you used to prepare the documents, who is as happy as can be to probate your assets, which never made it into the trust.

This description might sound like an exaggeration—the exception rather than the rule—but I assure you, it’s not. When you understand the mindset of most estate planning attorneys, you’ll realize that this kind of experience is entirely predictable. The estate planning industry is actually built on the assumption that all clients are in their 70s or 80s, people whose life won’t really change before they die.

We at the law offices of Vaughan de Kirby are devoted to helping people who actually stand to lose the most without an estate plan: those with growing families, whose lives may change significantly on their way to success.

We understand that, unless your estate plan changes along with your life, your assets and the law, your estate plan—an expression of your best intentions—will completely fail, leaving your family with a terrible mess to sort through.

We urge you not to wait. Give your loved ones the gift of proper estate planning.

For more information on how we're different, please read some of the articles that I've posted on our site.