An estate plan is not a thing.  It is not a set of documents in a leather binder with fancy lettering on the front.  An estate plan is exactly that:  a plan.  It is a plan of action and a set of instructions that the client lays out to make it easy for the client’s family and heirs to deal with the administration of the client’s affairs once the client is no longer able to do so.

At Magner Law, we approach estate planning from the perspective of helping the client define his or her goals first and then figuring out what the best means of accomplishing those goals are.  Then, and only then, do we start putting pen to paper.  We don’t try to steer clients into a specific estate plan or set of pre-packaged documents.

We also like to work in concert with the client’s other professionals, such as the client’s financial advisor, accountants, real estate brokers, and others, where possible in order to ensure that none of us is undoing the work of the others.

The fact is that there are a lot of tools available to the practitioner when it comes to estate planning, but there is usually only one right tool for the job for the specific client.