Estate Planning
Our Approach. Our estate planning attorneys make estate planning understandable, straightforward, and even fun. We help our clients prepare understandable, custom-tailored, cost-effective, estate plans:
- Understandable. We help clients understand the special family and business issues that could affect their estate plans. And we cut out the jargon and legalese, explaining legal concepts and drafting sophisticated documents in plain English.
- Custom-tailored. There is no one-size-fits-all estate plan. We believe that an estate plan should match the client’s individual needs, and that clients’ needs will change over time. We cherish the long-term relationships with our clients: we regularly work with clients and their families to update their estate plans to reflect changes in their lives and goals. In fact, we have worked with three generations of some families.
- Cost-effective. Because our estate plans are tailored to clients’ current life situations (rather than some one-size-fits-all solution), our flat fees properly reflect the benefits to our clients. Most of our estate planning services are billed on a flat-fee basis, making clients’ costs predictable.
Team-oriented. If you have a trusted family advisor, we will gladly work with them when preparing your estate plan. We regularly collaborate with local investment advisors and accountants to choose the best estate planning strategies for our clients.
Breadth of Expertise. Over the decades, we have cultivated broad and deep estate planning expertise. Our estate planning attorneys handle a wide variety of estate planning situations, ranging from simple estate plans for families to highly specialized planning:
- High-net-worth estates and death tax minimization;
- Small business and family business succession planning;
- Special needs and disability planning;
- Long-term care and Medicaid planning;
- Blended family, second marriage, and post-divorce estate planning;
- Estate plans for high-conflict or acrimonious family situations;
- Charitable giving;
- After-death tax planning;
- Prenuptial or postnuptial agreements; and,
- Estate planning for someone who has received a windfall, such as a large inheritance or lawsuit judgment.
Full service. Our firm helps our clients’ loved ones administer their trusts and estates. If disputes arise about administration of trusts or estates, our estate planning lawyers work closely with our litigators to resolve the disputes as quickly and economically as possible. For more information, please visit the Trust & Estate Administration section of our web site.
MWP’s Estate Planning Attorneys