Posts tagged: Estate Planning Drafting Software

Lawyers With Purpose welcomes Guest Blogger, Tiffany Brown, Vice President of DocuBank.  We frequently get asked on our CCI calls, or at our LWP events about the value of DocuBank.  

Tiffany offers her insight, starting with one simple question:

Have you gotten that 2AM call yet?  The one where a client's family is looking for the healthcare power of attorney or living will, while their loved one sits in an ER or ICU?

If you have, then you are probably already using DocuBank.  We offer protection for your firm and your clients to ensure that that 2am emergency is covered.  The DocuBank Emergency card offers 24/7/365 access to the documents your clients need during a medical emergency.   

The DocuBank service has been protecting clients since 1993 and during the past two decades we’ve evolved to include an online SAFE that clients can use to access all of their estate planning documents.  SAFE allows clients to upload and share all the personal documents they would like convenient online access to.  The ability to create limited access sub accounts for family and friends, and appoint a Digital Executor to inherit the account upon verified proof of death makes SAFE a great tool for families to share and exchange vital information with you and each other.

Any of the thousands of attorneys who use DocuBank  will tell you that they enjoy the peace of mind that DocuBank brings their clients.  And those attorneys who have received one of those 2 am wake-up calls before using DocuBank will tell you that the peace of mind DocuBank provides for their firm is well worth the price for the service. 

But DocuBank offers more than just powerful client protection. 

We also offer creative tools to help you strengthen client retention, create referrals with friends and family and reach out for referrals in your area. 

• Email referrals to family and friends when clients enroll;
• Hospital Outreach packet for area doctors;
• Fax to Physician Program gives clients’ doctors the information they need to access these documents for your client;
• Branding of your firm on each card
• Branding of your firm on the client DocuBank landing page
• Portal on your website that takes them directly to your branded page
• Tangible addition to your maintenance plan
• And much More…

We are happy to provide special discounts and benefits through our partnership with Lawyers with Purpose.  Please click here to find out more about how DocuBank can be a great value-added tool for your firm and your clients.

Tiffany Brown, Vice President, DocuBank

If you're at the Practice With Purpose program, or Members Tri Annual Retreat with Lawyers With Purpose in Chicago this week, stop by the DocuBank booth and say hello to Mike Wall!  He's there and can answer all your questions.

Roslyn Drotar, Coaching, Consulting & Implementation – Lawyers With Purpose

We recently had a discussion on the Live ListServ on a newer component of the LWP-CCS, the client centered drafting software created by Lawyers with Purpose.  For clients that may not have a huge amount of assets and would be highly unlikely to ever really worry about the estate tax and they don’t want the added “confusion” of having a lot of language regarding estate tax in their documents, there is now an option to create a “common trust” for married couples. 

A common trust gives asset protection as does the credit shelter / family trust.  The same questions are asked as they are in the credit shelter / family trust option, but it rips out the tax language.  It is assumed that the client does not need and won’t ever have a need for the estate tax provisions. 

The common trust is funded after the death of the first spouse.  If husband and wife have separate trusts, then the common trust is funded by 100% of the deceased spouse’s trust.  But if there is a joint trust, then the trust is funded by 50% of the joint assets in the trust and all of the assets on the deceased spouse’s separate assets. 

How does this look?  Let’s say husband and wife with a $500,000 joint trust.  In our scenario, the husband puts in $300,000, the wife puts in $100,000 and they jointly contributed $100,000.  Assume first that the husband dies first.  The terms of the trust would then put $300,000 of the husband’s assets in the common trust.  Then half of the $100,000 that was jointly contributed would be added, and none of the wife’s contribution would be added to the common trust.  So a total of $350,000 would be put into the common trust. 

Now assume the wife died first.  In that case, the $100,000 that she separately contributed would be added to the common trust.  Also half of the $100,000 that was jointly contributed would go to the common trust.  So if the wife died first, $150,000 total would be contributed to the common trust.

The live listserv is an incredible valuable opportunity to get your burning legal/technical, marketing, and any other practice related questions answered in real time.   Don’t miss out!

David J. Zumpano, Esq, CPA, Co-founder Lawyers With Purpose, Founder and Senior Partner of Estate Planning Law Center

At Lawyers With Purpose, we put a tremendous amount of time and expertise into developing tools for estate planning attorneys to help them day in and day out, in their practice and with their clients. One tool for example is the "Estate Plan Audit."

The Estate Plan Audit is a checklist of 15 questions to tap into the client’s needs.  The goal of the Audit is to find out where they are currently, and where they want to be. And we can do that by asking them just 15 very important questions that address what their estate planning goals are. Then ask them to rate them each, on a scale of 1 to 10, one being not very important and ten being very important.  What they’re really doing is showing us what's important in their world.

When you use the Estate Plan Audit, the best part about it is, that it becomes a non-sales process. This completely focuses on the client, without the attorney pushing any particular agenda. We’re not pushing any particular trust or plan on the client.  They’re really looking at where they are now, what their needs are and what they might want. 

If your an LWP members you can review our 2012 Enhancement Retreat, where members Jeff Bellomo and Susan Hunter discuss in much greater detail the Estate Plan Audit, how to connect it to the workshop and the stories told in The 7 Threats Workshop.  All you've got to do is log into the members website and hover over the “LWP Process” tab, choose the “LWP Program Modules Folder,“ then scroll all the way down to a folder titled "2012 Annual Enhancement Retreat."  You’re looking for the November 14, 2012, Day 1, Video 4.  Start listening right about the 27 minute mark!

We hope you put the Estate Plan Audit to good use. It's a great tool for distilling all of the pieces of an estate plan into what really matters to the client, in a way that won't feel like a sales job.  If you aren't a Lawyers With Purpose member, contact Molly Hall at mhall@lawyerswithpurpose.com for more information.

David J. Zumpano, Esq, CPA, Co-founder Lawyers With Purpose, Founder and Senior Partner of Estate Planning Law Center