Your 3-Year Check-Up
Not because the documents were bad. Because the planning stopped at the documents.
Most Estate Plans Fail After They Are Signed
Most estate planning firms treat the relationship as finished the day you sign. The binder goes on a shelf, the file gets closed, and for a great many families that signing day is the last time they ever hear from their lawyer. We think that is the cardinal sin of this profession.
A plan is not a stack of paper. It is a set of instructions about a life, and lives move. So do the rules. A plan that was right in the year you signed it can quietly stop being right without anybody noticing, and the people who find out are your family, at the worst possible moment, when nothing can be fixed.
The 3-Year Check-Up exists so that does not happen.
What Actually Happens at a Check-Up
Every three years we sit down with you and go through the plan itself. Not a form letter, not a phone call, a meeting.
We read the documents again with you. We look at what has changed in your family since the last time. We look at what you own now, and how it is titled, because that is where most plans quietly break. And we tell you plainly whether the plan still does what you hired us to make it do.
Sometimes the answer is that nothing needs to change, and you leave knowing that. That is a real outcome and it is worth having.
The Three Things That Change
The law. Estate, tax and MassHealth rules shift constantly, and they shift without telling you. Your check-up makes sure your plan reflects today’s rules rather than the rules from the year you first signed.
Your family. A marriage, a divorce, a birth, a death, a child who has grown into someone who can handle responsibility, or one who has not. The people you named years ago may not be the people you would name now.
What you own. New accounts, a sold house, a refinance, an inheritance, a rollover. Assets move constantly, and an asset that quietly falls outside the trust is not protected by it. This is the single most common fault we find, and it is the reason funding is part of the work rather than an afterthought.
Where the Check-Up Fits
Our whole approach has three steps. We plan the strategy before anything gets drafted. We establish it across every asset you own, retitling, funding the trust, recording the deeds. And we protect it, which means reviewing it on a schedule for as long as you want us to.
The 3-Year Check-Up is that third step. It is not an add-on or a courtesy call. It is the part of the work that keeps the first two from going stale, and it is why we call ourselves your Estate Planner For Life®.
You can read more about how we plan, establish and protect.
Who Gets One
3-Year Check-Ups are included with most of our plans. If your plan includes them, they are built in. There is nothing to buy and nothing to remember.
If you are on one of our entry-level plans, you can still have one. It is scheduled as a paid meeting rather than an included one. Either way, no client is shut out of a review.
If you are not sure which applies to you, ask us. We will tell you straight away.
When Yours Is Due
Watch for a reminder from our office when your check-up comes up.
But do not wait for it if something has already changed. A diagnosis, a death in the family, a move, a sale, a marriage, a new grandchild, a business you have just bought or sold, any of those is a reason to call now rather than in two years. The reminder is a backstop, not a rule.
If You Are Not a Client Yet
Then this is one of the questions worth asking whoever you are considering, including us: what happens after I sign?
Ask who reviews the plan, how often, whether it is included, and what it costs if it is not. Ask who moves your house into the trust and whether that is in the price. A firm that has a clear answer to those questions is thinking about the twenty years after signing day. A firm that does not is thinking about the signing.
You will find our answers to those and other questions on What Makes Us Different, and you will find what you walk out of your first meeting with on the Family Protection Report.
If you would like to talk it through, book a free 15-minute consult call with our Lead Intake Coordinator, Nicole Ott, or give us a call at 978-657-7437. There is no charge and no pressure, the goal is simply to work out what your family actually needs to do next.