What Your Client’s Estate Plan Is Probably Missing

The first fifteen minutes of any meeting in our office aren’t about wills or trusts at all. They’re about getting to know each other, building trust, and assessing the situation.

I was making small talk with a couple, nothing more than pleasantries about a place they visit each year, their children, and hobbies. Their questionnaire hadn’t flagged anything out of the ordinary. When I gently asked about their health, he said no, nothing worth mentioning. But I noticed a small hesitation in his answer, and his wife’s eyes darted to him with a nervous shift in her seat. So I gently pressed again, and explained that knowing someone’s health history is really how we build the most protective plan possible. That’s when he told us he’d recently been diagnosed with a progressive neurological condition, and that he and his wife were still meeting with specialists to understand what it meant.

That moment, the one where a client finally tells you what’s really going on, is exactly the moment we need to be the absolute best at the jobs we do. It’s also a skill, being perceptive enough to notice, and creating an environment where clients feel comfortable fully disclosing the important matters in their lives.

If we had done what a “simple will” request usually means, taken down some names, filled in a template, and sent them on their way, we would have missed the one fact that mattered most. A diagnosis like that isn’t only a health concern. It’s a capacity question, a long-term care question, a power of attorney question, and quite possibly, eventually, a Medicaid question. That’s not just estate planning. That’s elder law. And a firm that only drafts wills never has a reason to ask the question that would have surfaced it.

Too many big box concept estate planning lawyers have automated a system that fits every client into one plan. We don’t. So many people walk in already certain, “I just need a simple will,” usually because they’re worried about fees and don’t want to feel sold to. We understand that instinct. It’s exactly why we don’t lead with a price list. We lead with listening, because the fastest, simplest request is usually the one that needs the most conversation, not the least. It’s things like whether your property is even titled the way you think it is, whether a second home in another state means two separate court proceedings someday, or what happens to a family business when the person running it and the person inheriting it aren’t the same. And it’s questions like these:

Do you have a blended family, and have you thought about what happens if your spouse remarries after you’re gone?

Do you want your assets to stay in your bloodline, protected from the outlaws, also known as the in-laws?

Is there a child, grandchild, or sibling with a disability whose inheritance could accidentally cost them their benefits?

Is there an estranged child or family member you’ve actually addressed in your plan, instead of just hoping it sorts itself out?

Do you have a plan for long-term care, or is “hope I never need it” the plan?

None of these get answered by a form. They get answered by paying attention, and by having the depth of legal knowledge to know what that attention is actually looking for. Some people bristle at the word “elder,” and we understand why. But health, capacity, and long-term care are elder law questions no matter how old the client is, and a plan that ignores them isn’t really a plan. That’s why we don’t separate the two practices. We can’t.

For the advisors, CPAs, and attorneys who occasionally send a client our way for “a simple will”: that’s exactly why we ask so many questions before we ever draft one. A missed detail in someone else’s office doesn’t only cost that family, it reflects on whoever made the introduction.

We noticed a diagnosis nobody had mentioned before we ever pulled out a will. The next “simple will” that crosses your desk might be hiding something just as important. Send it to a firm that’s going to notice.