Frequently Asked Questions

A will tells a probate court who should receive your assets. A revocable living trust lets your family receive them without any probate court being necessary.

Think of a trust like the red wagon you had as a kid. You put your toys in the wagon, and you still pull the wagon wherever you want. You put your home and your accounts in the trust, and you still control the trust. During your life: You can buy and sell real estate whenever you want. You can get in and out of your financial accounts whenever you want. You can spend as much or as little as you want and make any changes you want for the rest of your life.

When you pass away, the person you named to be your successor Trustee steps in, takes over all of your assets and distributes the assets to exactly who you want your things going to without a judge involved.

Here is what most people do not know: a will does not avoid probate. Even a perfectly written will sends your family to court. It only tells the judge who should receive things once the process is over. That is why virtually all of our clients choose to have us create a Comprehensive Trust and Estate Plan to keep their family out of court and out of conflict should something happen to you.

Probate is the court process of transferring the ownership of the assets you own out of your name and into the names of the people you want to inherit them. It applies to anything you own in your own name when you die, with or without a will.

In the states we practice in, probate typically runs 9 to 18 months, and sometimes years. Expect it to consume roughly 3% to 5% of what the estate is worth once you add attorney fees, executor fees, court costs, bond and appraisals. On a $1,000,000 estate that is $30,000 to $50,000 that does not reach your family.

Our founder, Elliott Feldman’s own mother, lived this experience. Even though Elliott’s dad had an estate plan from one of the top firms in town, his mom still spent almost 3 years in probate court and had to pay a probate attorney $55,000, just to get the assets his dad left behind for them. All because that lawyer didn’t do everything he needed to do to make sure that plan was actually going to work when the time came.

A properly integrated revocable living trust is built to keep your family out of that process entirely.

Yes. If you own a home (even with a mortgage), have children, and have been saving for your retirement, then you have enough at stake for this to matter, and you have loved ones you’re going to need to pass your assets to with the least amount of stress and paperwork possible.

Most of the families we serve would never call themselves wealthy. They have worked hard for what they have and they want their kids to inherit without probate court, the government, and lawyers standing in the way. Plus, our clients want to make sure that everything that they've worked their whole life creating ends up going to their children and is not taken from them in a divorce, lawsuit or bankruptcy after they're gone, or ending up in the hands of someone else’s grandkids and not their own flesh and blood.

If you have minor children, it is more urgent, not less. Without the right documents, a judge decides who raises them and a judge decides who controls the money left for them. Not you.

You can, and these are the two most common shortcuts we watch fail.

A beneficiary designation hands money to a person with no instructions and no protection. If that person is a minor, the account goes to probate anyway, because a child cannot legally inherit until 18. If your adult son dies before you do, his share often goes to probate. Plus, whatever they receive through a TOD or POD is theirs outright, which means it can be taken from them in a divorce or a lawsuit the day after they get it.

Adding a child to your deed creates a tax bill they would not otherwise owe. Say you bought your home for $100,000 and it is worth $500,000 today. If your daughter inherits it through your trust, the IRS resets her basis to $500,000, and she can sell it that day and owe nothing. If you put her on the deed while you are alive, she inherits your original basis on her share instead, and that same sale can create tens of thousands of dollars in capital gains taxes.

It also costs you control. You now need her signature to sell or refinance your own home, and her divorce, her lawsuit or her creditors can attach to it. Her legal problems become your legal problems.

Instead of handing your children their inheritance outright, your trust can hold each child's share in a Lifetime Asset Protection Trust that your child controls but does not personally own.

Because the inheritance is not in their name, it is far harder for a divorcing spouse, a creditor or a bankruptcy court to reach. Your son or daughter can serve as trustee of their own share, invest it and use it for their family. If they divorce, it is not marital property to be split. If they are sued, it is not an asset in their name.

You also decide where it goes next. When your child passes away, what is left follows your instructions, typically to your grandchildren, rather than to a son-in-law or daughter-in-law who may remarry.

Your children cannot set this up for themselves after you are gone. It has to be built into your estate plan while you are alive.

About 10 weeks from your planning session to your finished plan, and every meeting is on Zoom from the comfort of your own home.

It starts with a free 15-minute call to talk through your goals and see whether you qualify for a Family Prosperity Planning Session. That session is a two-hour working meeting where we look at everything you own and everyone you love, walk through what would happen to them under your state's law today, and design your comprehensive trust and estate plan together.

About 5 weeks later we meet again to walk through every document to make sure you know exactly what you're signing so that you're comfortable with what you're signing, before you sign anything. About 2 weeks after that is your signing meeting we conduct at your own home, with us guiding you the entire time on Zoom with our notary and the witnesses in the room. Over the following 3 weeks we integrate your assets into the plan, and we finish with a final meeting to confirm everything is in place.

Every date is set with you at the start of our engagement at times both of us agreed to, that work with your schedule. You always know what happens next and when. Plus, you have a dedicated Client Services Director that you can always call to ask any questions you want about our process during the time we're working with each other just in case you forgot a detail or need a question answered.

Yes. At your kitchen table, you sign paperwork we print and ship to you, in front of two witnesses and a notary we send to your door, while our team is on Zoom walking you through every signature.

Before the signing we ship your binder to your home with every signature line already flagged. You invite two adults who are not related to you, not named in your plan, not listed to inherit anything. They are only needed for the first part of the meeting. If you do not have two people to ask, tell us and we will help arrange it.

These are not online forms you click through and e-sign. This is the same formal signing you would do in a law office, done in the comfort of your own home.

Asset integration means connecting the things you own to your trust so the trust actually controls them when the time comes. It is the single most skipped step in estate planning, and yes, we do it with you.

Some have referred to this as “funding the trust.” We call it integration, because nobody is asking you to put more money into anything. You are connecting what you already own to the plan that is supposed to protect it.

A trust can only protect assets that are integrated into it. An unfunded plan is just paper, and it is exactly why Elliott Feldman’s father’s trust failed his family and forced Elliott’s mom to spend almost 3 years in probate court and pay $55,000 to a probate attorney by the end of it. Because that lawyer never integrated any assets into the trust!

That’s why every Comprehensive Trust and Estate Plan we create for our clients includes a Personalized Asset Integration Plan. This is where we work together with our clients as a team, where we can take care of the heavy lifting for assets that are more technical and are harder to integrate, like real estate and businesses, while we give you written step-by-step instructions for you to integrate your financial assets, with our team just a phone call, text or email away while you work through it. We will review your asset integration progress together at your final meeting.

Yes. A revocable living trust can be changed at any time while you are alive and competent.

After you sign, and after we work together as a team to integrate your assets into your plan, we meet one more time to confirm everything is in place, and then we maintain a lifetime relationship by offering you ongoing reviews every 3 years at no additional charge. That way, we have the ability to make sure that the plan keeps pace with any changes that may occur in your life.

We are licensed to practice law in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Michigan and Ohio, and we serve families in every county of each state from the comfort of your own home.

Here is the traditional way. You and your spouse drive 40 minutes across town, then sit in a waiting room while "15 minutes" turns into 47. An attorney talks over your head, slides a retainer agreement across the desk for $5,000 at $375 an hour, cannot tell you how many hours it will take, and says the office will call when the documents are ready. Weeks later you drive back across town, a legal assistant slides the documents in front of you, and nobody explains what any of it does. No final meeting. Nobody making sure your assets ever get integrated. You walk out with an expensive stack of paper that does nothing for your children when they need it.

We do the opposite. One flat fee agreed to in advance with every call, text and email included. A separate meeting to review every document before you sign. A notary at your door. And a team that stays with you until your assets are actually integrated.

Think about the last thing you ordered on Amazon. It arrived at your door, it was exactly what you needed, and you never once shook the CEO's hand.

And you do not need to be good with technology. Our oldest client to go through this was 94. But remember, this is not really about you. It is about your children, who may be living three states away the day they need help. A firm they can reach by Zoom or a phone call from anywhere is the firm they will be grateful you chose.