By now you’ve seen that Holmes Shirley Law is a special law firm. Our goal is to help you provide the strongest legal protections available for your family while preparing you to build the future you want. Because you love your family, you know your family deserves the kind of protection, guidance and care we provide our clients with for their lifetimes.
It’s important that you know how we work because we do things a bit differently at Holmes Shirley Law than at other, traditional law firms. That’s why our clients love us so much.
Schedule Your Initial Estate Planning Session Today
Call our office at 720-248-7621 now to schedule your personal Initial Estate Planning Session or check for our next available appointments online here. We regularly see new clients on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. We also offer a limited number of evening and weekend appointments each month to make planning as convenient for you as possible.
When you schedule your Initial Estate Planning Session, we block 2 hours on our calendar so we can focus entirely on you and your family during this time. We will send you a pre-meeting package of information that will include an Estate Planning Worksheet for you to complete before our meeting. This information and worksheet will help you begin the process of getting your legal and financial life in order.
During our meeting together, we will guide you to gently look at what would happen for your loved ones and with your assets if something were to happen to you. Then we’ll look at what you want to happen and help you create a roadmap to get that plan in place as easily as possible. Clients routinely say “wow, if we had known how easy this would be, we would have done it years ago!” after meeting with us.
Our Initial Estate Planning Session is valued at $500.00. This meeting goes beyond a typical consultation at other law firms to provide you with individualized education and accessible legal expertise. Thus if we create a comprehensive estate plan for you that planning fee is applied towards the fee for your comprehensive estate plan. If you choose to not do your planning with our firm, the fee covers our time preparing for and participating in your session.
It is our standard policy that if you cannot make your scheduled Initial Estate Planning Session that you cancel within 1 week in order to not be charged for this time. We charge for canceled appointments because we provide our very best service to those families who are looking for a long-term relationship with their trusted adviser. We expend most of our energy providing an exceedingly high degree of service to our existing clients and limit the number of new clients we see each week. Advanced individualized preparation is required to ensure that each Initial Estate Planning Session meets the needs of the individuals attending. As a result, your appointment time has a value prior to your arrival in the office. So if something comes up and you can’t attend your appointment, we need to have enough advance notice to open the slot to another waiting family or client.
What to Do Prior to Your Initial Estate Planning Session
After scheduling your appointment, you will receive an initial Estate Planning Worksheet, either electronically or by mail. We request that your Estate Planning Worksheet and related supplemental information be returned to our office 3 days prior to your Initial Estate Planning Session either by mail, fax or secure electronic communication. If you have existing estate planning documents, please make sure that we also have these for review prior to meeting with you.
Returning this information before your meeting allows us to have an idea of your goals and objectives for planning, your current situations and options we may want to present you to achieve the best plan for your family’s individual situation. Without this information, our ability to provide the personalized service we pride ourselves on is limited.
Please feel free to call the office at 720-248-7621 any time if you need assistance completing your worksheet or have any questions at all.
What to Expect the Day of Your Initial Estate Planning Session
On the day of your meeting, please expect to spend up to 2 hours with me, Karen Shirley. The initial meeting has two purposes:
(1) To identify whether there is a good fit between you and our law firm and,
(2) To educate you about the law, including intestacy and probate, what would happen if you died, or become incapacitated with your current (or no) plan in place.
By looking at what would happen under your current plan, you can identify what you would want to happen differently and then working together with my legal guidance, we decide what is necessary to give you the peace of mind of knowing your family would be taken care of in the way you want if something happened to you.
Assuming that we determine that there is a good fit between our firm and your family AND that you identify specific ways you would want things to happen that are different than what would happen if something happened to you, we can design a plan for your family right away.
What Happens Next?
Once we have completed the design of your plan, we will review your assets for the purpose of ensuring that everything you own will be titled for maximum protection and then schedule a meeting for you to sign your planning documents approximately 4 weeks later.
We have a process of reviewing your documents with you that makes your plan so easy to understand that you will know for certain that we understood exactly the way you want things to happen when something happens to you and that your loved ones will be in excellent hands with our firm. Once you sign your planning documents, your assets and your family are protected as discussed during your design meeting.
We see that as only the beginning of our relationship. You may make changes to your planning documents at no charge for up to 90 days after you sign your documents.
At our final meeting during the planning stage of our relationship, we verify that all of your asset transfers are moving forward on track whether we are taking the lead or you are taking the lead with our guidance. We review your asset spreadsheet with you and ensure all of your questions are answered. Of course, if they aren’t or they become cloudy later on, we are always available to answer your questions at any time in the future. And, there’s no charge for that.
What Happens After I Sign My Estate Planning Documents and Take Them Home?
After the planning phase is complete, the maintenance phase of your plan will begin. At no additional charge, we review your plan every three years and keep you informed about changes in the law and about other issues that affect your family and your wealth. Any changes needed at the time of the three year review will be a new flat fee.
Finally, we are always here for you and we don’t charge you for phone calls, faxes, or emails. We welcome your communications! You’ll be amazed at how easy and painless the entire planning process will be for your family.
Call us today to schedule your Initial Estate Planning Session at 720-248-7621 or by scheduling online now.
