Overview

In this episode of the Family Legacy Podcast, Michael Rutkowski and co-host Kerry Guard break down the essential steps of estate planning, from booking a consultation to choosing the right documents and attorney. With insights on costs, trust funding, and finding the best fit, they make the estate planning process approachable and straightforward

Episode Summary

Starting the Process
Michael begins by explaining the first step: booking an initial consultation with an estate planning attorney. He shares that most people start with general inquiries about wills or powers of attorney, often not fully understanding what they need. The purpose of this consultation is to identify goals and review options based on each family’s specific situation.

Common Reasons for Estate Planning
Michael explains that clients usually seek estate planning after major life changes, like having children or experiencing a decline in health. He also mentions that professionals like financial advisors or doctors often refer clients when they need to plan for asset protection or medical decision-making.

Choosing the Right Attorney
Michael emphasizes the importance of finding an estate planning attorney who specializes in the field. He suggests looking for someone whose style aligns with your personality, as this fosters open communication, which is crucial for creating a customized estate plan.

Cost and Planning Options
Michael provides insight into the flat-fee structure that most estate planning attorneys use. He outlines basic costs for wills, trusts, and powers of attorney, and explains that the fees increase with the complexity of the plan, such as asset protection and tax planning.

Funding the Trust
Michael discusses the critical step of funding the trust, explaining that many people mistakenly think their assets are automatically placed in their trust. Without retitling assets to align with the trust, families may face probate, negating the benefits of estate planning. Rutkowski Law Firm includes this service as part of the planning process to ensure everything is properly transferred.

The episode wraps up with Michael encouraging listeners to prioritize estate planning rather than putting it off. He shares that completing the process gives families peace of mind, knowing their assets and wishes are protected.

If you'd like assistance with estate planning or asset protection, please contact Rutkowski Law Firm at 248-955-2842.

Transcript

Michael Rutkowski 0:00
All right, this week's tip. Here it is, on Google, you can actually track the price of flights. I'm almost embarrassed to tell you this, because I feel like I'm pretty tech savvy, but I would manually just go in and constantly search and think like Tuesdays are better than Sundays, but you can set up a tracker to tell you when a flight is the cheapest, and then go ahead and buy that's this week's tip.

Kerry Guard 0:29
Welcome to the family legacy podcast. The podcast goes beyond legal jargon and gets to the root of how to ensure your past, present and future are protected. This episode is brought to you by their Tosca law firm, Michigan's leading asset protection, estate planning, Medicaid and Elder Law Firm. And here's our host, Michael rotoski. Michael, happy Tuesday, how's it going? It's going great. How about you? Kerry, pretty good. Love the tip this week. It sounds like you're doing some flights and planning over there. Yes. So here's what's going on in my world. Is my wife and I, maybe five years ago, set out a goal that we want to show our girls the world, and we've never been outside of Mexico and Canada and the United States, and so it's time. It's time to do it. So 2025 we are planning a trip with the girls. I don't know where. This is where I'm leaning on you. Audience, you know, where should we go? So, three girls, 1210, and eight, like, where's a family friendly place to like, you know, get your feet wet. First trip overseas, easy flight, all those things. Would love some recommendations. So please, please reach out and help me out.

There's an article. I'll go dig it up for you, because we were thinking about heading over to Europe, but we didn't want to do like Paris, like the traditional Rome kids. My kids aren't really I've been to both of those places. I just don't see my kids caring as deeply as I do about the arts architecture.

But on that list, there was something around, I think it was Stockholm. Surprisingly enough, it's supposed to be like the ultimate kid friendly city to go visit. So I'll plant that seed with you, and we'll look forward to hearing from our audience of where they would recommend, yeah,

Michael Rutkowski 2:18
some of the information that you need, it's seven days. So that's how long we're going to be. What one week is the only time. So I know a lot of people recommend bouncing around from cities. So all we have is seven days, but open to bounce around just, you know, let me know, I

Kerry Guard 2:32
don't know. I like becoming a neighborhoody. I also feel like with kids too. It sort of takes a minute to like, settle in somewhere, for sure, for sure. So I would say,

if you can, like, find a place that you really want to explore and like, see it and live it, I would recommend not. I'm going to go against the grade and I'm going to Sarah and not bouncy around, but we'll see what other people say. We'll see what they have to say. Appreciate your effort. Thank you in advance. Yes, yes, yes. Stay tuned on that. If you have any suggestions for Michael, simply email him at MLR, at ratoski Law Firm, com, and we look forward to hearing from you. We'll be even though you're gonna email Michael, we'll discuss them on the show. It's more fun,

awesome. Well, I'm excited for you. I can't wait to hear more in the meantime, back at the ranch, here at the ratoski Law Firm, we got a lot going on. Few things we've been having this podcast now. We've done a few episodes. Got them in our back pocket. We're launching them one at a time. It's really exciting. But

I think one of the you know, it's all, well, I'm going to talk about the stuff, the features, the what you're going to get, why each piece is important. But I do wonder if a roadblock for folks is the unknown of like, well, how do I even get started? And what does that even look like as somebody who hates getting on the phone with pretty much anybody,

I feel like that's a roadblock for me personally, of like, how long is this going to take? An oh my gosh, and this paperwork that I'm going to have to fill out, so I thought it would be good to walk people through it, maybe take out the Yeah, no worries.

Michael Rutkowski 4:12
A little this is actually a great topic. A lot of times when a family meets with an estate planning attorney, it's probably going to be the one of their first times meeting with an attorney, hopefully, right? Um, so there is a lot of like, you can just tell when we meet with with families that they're just a little nervous, like they don't know. Like they think, I don't know. There's just something nerve wracking about meeting with an attorney, I guess. But no, I think it'd be great to talk about what does that process look like, so that everyone understands. And I can tell you this, I work with lawyers across the country, you're going to find that the process is very similar. It doesn't matter if you meet with us. I hope you do. But if you don't, everyone else's process.

Is very similar when it comes to this type of this type of work. You know, it's not your typical pay a retainer fee and we just Bill hourly. There's kind of like a step by step process. So I maybe it makes sense Kerry to start from the beginning. What does it look like to even book a consult, right? Yeah, this day and age, you can probably do it online. Most law firms will have some kind of request to book a consult, but you're going to probably at some point get on the phone or exchange some information with the law firm. Just what are you looking to do? Like, why are we even talking about estate planning?

You know, did you have a some a situation where a relative passed away and they went through the probate process, and you're trying to avoid that. Did you have some kids, and maybe it's your first time parent, and you're just like, I know this is something I'm supposed to do, so I'm gonna reach out and see what this is all about. So usually that first call to the law firm, or engagement with the firm, is just talking to the firm about, you know, what you want to meet about, you know, and you don't need to necessarily know. I mean, if you just tell them, hey, think I'm supposed to do some estate planning, can we talk about it? That's really it. What the law firm is going to do from there is there, before we get there, before we get there. Michael, I think this is really key, because I think that's the hard the hard the Getting Started piece is definitely the hardest. And can you give us some ideas on what people call in about you mentioned that you could just say, Hey, I'm thinking about estate planning. But people don't even always know what a full state planning is, or if they need a full estate plan, so they show up with different requests. What are some of those? Yeah, I would say the the, probably the biggest request, is for a will. I mean, TV and the media has taught us over the years that a will is the end all be all of estate planning tools. But when you get down to like what someone is trying to accomplish with the estate planning tool, like avoiding probate, making it as easy as on the kids as possible, a trust might make more sense. But again, that is the whole purpose of that first initial consultation to, like, figure that out. So I would say most folks or families call wanting to put in place a will or maybe a power of attorney document. That's another big one too. Like they have a loved one that's health is declining, and they know that they're going to need to be able to make decisions for them. And how do they do that? And so there's the group of people who just learn at some point in their life that they need to do estate planning. And then there's another group of people that some other professionals pushing them to us. And what I mean by that is they might be working with a four a financial advisor who has, you know, managed their assets, and they say, hey, it's probably a good time for you to get an estate plan. Or maybe it's a doctor or a hospital that's saying, you know, their health is declining and you need a power of attorney. So another professional is saying that you need estate planning services. And so those are probably the biggest reasons families call declining in health. Power of Attorney will are, like, the starting point. But again, that's okay, okay, you don't need to know. Like, I guess that's the point of this is you don't need to know. And so the first step is to set up that initial consultation to just learn what are your options. That's really the point of that first meeting is going to be and that meeting is about an hour. So we'll just keep walking through what the process looks like. It's about an hour meeting with the law firm to just figure out what are your options, right? It's just like buying a car. You go into the dealership and you gotta learn what are your options and what is the cost going to be for each of these options, and then it's up to you to decide what you want to do. That's all going to happen in the first initial consult. Prior to that initial consult, the law firm is probably going to request some information. They're probably going to send you either some online questionnaire or paper questionnaire to just get some basic understanding of like, are you married or are you single? Do you have kids? How old are these kids? We need that information to make an educated recommendation to you, of like, what maybe might make the most sense. A lot of times, estate planning attorneys are going to ask for some financial information too, and it's up to you what you want to share, but it does help us, and know this too, that is not how the secret sauce is. We don't price based on assets. It has nothing to do with whether you have 500,000 a million or a million and a half like that is not how prices are done. It's more the complexities of what's going on in your life. Is it a blended family that each has their own adult children, and we need to make sure that one can't cut out the other. Like those things make it more complex. Do you have out of state properties? That's what's important to us when we make a recommendation. If you have everything in a chase account and then one investment account, it.

Doesn't get easier than that, and it doesn't matter if you had $5 million like, that's really straightforward, married couple, couple kids and everything really consolidated. When it comes to assets, that's a very straightforward, you know, estate plan for us that makes sense. So the first step is engaging with calling the law firm just to see what. You know when you can get in for an initial consultation, booking that initial consult, where we just go over, here are your options, and here's what it looks like the cost for each one of those.

Let's talk about cost, because that's always a big hurdle for people. What are sort of let's take the most simple let's say it's not a big, over complicated thing. Let's say it's pretty straightforward. Yep, yeah, what sort of starting costs for something like that? Yeah, great question. Know this, though, it's all done on a flat fee basis, I would say 95% of attorneys out there, all over the country, will do estate planning services on a flat fee basis. So you know exactly what you're getting into. They'll be able to provide you that information at the end of the meeting. Once they go through all these things, like, hey, a trust might be this. A will package might be that, if you want to include funding, which is the retitling of all your assets, that might be this, they'll give you all that just here's some rough ballparks for like a Will Power of Attorney deed package. That's probably a starting point. You're looking at anywhere between one to 2000 in flat fees. Then from there, you go into revocable trust planning, which is probate avoidance, making sure you have power of attorneys, and you know, retitling of the assets into the trust. You know, that could be anywhere from call it two to 6000 depending on complexities, and then it just goes up from there on, if you have more complexities, asset protection planning, tax planning, you know, those kinds of things can be on top of that. But again, the beauty of it is you'll know exactly what each of these costs, and you can say what's important to you and what investment you want to make. You know, it's pretty straightforward at the end of that meeting. And then at the end of that meeting, you typically make a decision of, you know, do we want to move forward with the process or not? That's up to you.

When it comes to those initial consultations, Some law firms charge a fee. Some don't. Most times that if there is any fee charged for that initial consultation to be part of your planning, if you engage the firm to do the planning that I've seen range anywhere from 100 to some firms charge as much as 750 for that initial consult. Some do it for free.

I'd recommend you know, don't base your decision on whether if it's a free consult or not. You get what you pay for. Unfortunately,

Kerry Guard 12:49
what's some of the things you should be looking for when you're meeting with an estate planner like I imagine that when you're trying to

talk to somebody about really important life changing event, things, finding the right folks to sit down with. I mean, are all state planners generally the same? Or is there some tips and tricks in terms of, yeah, yeah,

Michael Rutkowski 13:17
I would say we all kind of have our own specialty here. Here's probably the most important tip is work with someone who specializes in estate planning. There's so many nuances to the law that it is very difficult to get a quality estate plan out of someone who also does divorce, real estate law, criminal, traffic. You know, they do a wide variety of things. It's very difficult. I would guess that it's just not going to be the same as someone who's really specializes in estate plan.

Then from there, you know, we all kind of have our specialties. We specialize in asset protection. Some some attorneys specialize in the on the business side, they do more business succession planning than general estate planning, and then culturally like you just gotta fit with the person, because the most important thing for me is that someone feels comfortable with me to tell me what I need to know to properly estate plan for them. So if, if we're not a good personality match, it's going to be difficult for me to do the best job for them. So I think everyone has, you know, what they see as an estate planning attorney. Someone might want a guy who's got gray hair and is 75 years old, well, that's not me. That's okay. Like, that's okay. Someone might want someone a little younger that they know will be able to grow with their family, like, everyone has what they want. So I would definitely recommend meeting with a couple unless you have a recommendation,

so that you have a good fit there. You know, learn their processes. Like, how long do they keep documents? How friendly is their staff? Are they available to send like, what's their technology like? You know, can they email documents to.

To institutions and stuff like, you know, you'll know pretty quickly, if you meet with a couple what you fit with and what you don't. Some do virtual, you know, we do a lot of virtual and in person, some don't do virtual at all. And virtual might be something you're really looking for, so that you don't have to leave your home every time you need to go have one of these appointments.

Kerry Guard 15:19
That's a lot. Let's talk about, yeah, no, I think that's really important. I think it's really important to make sure that you go with your gut on feeling like you found a good fit

in terms of what happens after that. Like, let's say you decide you do want to move forward. Is it a pretty lengthy process? Is it a lot of paperwork? Can you sort of give us a summary of what we can expect if we were to sign on to do our state plan? Great, great question. I would say the average process takes four to six weeks, and that is both determining

Michael Rutkowski 15:53
our schedule, like when we can have meetings, but also the clients too, because everyone's got a lot going on, we do a lot of emergency plans too. If a family calls us and health is declining, we've sometimes knocked out plans for a family in 24 to 48 hours. So I think we specialize a little bit more in that. But in any event, the average length is probably a month two tops, if you know, it's just like the holidays or there's a little complexity to it, but usually the process looks something like you have the initial meeting with the attorney. If you want to move forward, you'll schedule a design meeting where, that's where you go through all the nitty gritty of who's going to be your successor, trustees, beneficiaries, like the attorney, will guide you through all these questions, and they should prepare you so that you've already been talking about a little bit. Then we would draft the plan and schedule a review and signing meeting, and there's about a week or two between each of these meetings. And then once the plan is signed, then we move to funding, where we get all the assets into the trust. So it's usually of it's going to be a three to four meeting process, depending on the attorney or the law firms process, but that's kind of how it looks. You know, zoom in person, whatever works for the family, but that's kind of what. But you're not going to pay anything until you know, you engage the firm to move forward to the design meeting. Typically, does that make sense?

Kerry Guard 17:18
Let's talk about the Yeah, no, that's really helpful. Let's talk about the funding piece for a second.

It's important. It is important, and it sounds like it's also something you specialize in a little bit, where

Michael Rutkowski 17:31
not everybody does the funding piece. We recognized years ago that we're meeting with so many families that maybe had an estate plan done by another attorney, and they come to us wanting to make changes, and that's fine. You don't have to work with the attorney that you originally did your documents with. Any attorney can make changes as long as they know what they're doing. Once we get through the changes they want to make, we ask them the question, tell us a little bit about what's in your trust. Like, what's funded in your trust is your checking and savings retitled into the name of the trust. Is your house in the trust? Do you have a vacation property in the trust? And we always get this deer in headlights look like, Well, what do you mean? We paid this lawyer all this money doesn't mean everything's in our trust. And if you don't actually go to every single institution and let them know how to tie it to your trust, you're just back in probate doing all the things that you didn't want to do that you thought you were accomplishing by doing this estate plan. So funding is the most important piece. Most lawyers, just because they don't have the staff, the resources to do it, will just put a one page sheet on top of your trust, slide it across the table and say, Now, client, it's on you to go to all your institutions and do these things, and life happens and nothing ends up getting into the trust, which is super unfortunate. So our law firm does it differently. And there's some other law firms out there that do that as well, but it's definitely the minority. I would say, less than 5% of law firms do this, where we'll take on the funding for the clients and make sure that everything gets in their trust. So whatever they were trying to accomplish with their plan, accomplish with their plan actually works

Kerry Guard 19:06
great. Great question to have with you when you go look for an estate planning lawyer to ask them if they do the funding piece. So thank you for your wisdom. I you know it's a great point. You just said,

Michael Rutkowski 19:22
I feel like sometimes we get a lot of phone calls just right out of the gate asking price. And to me, that's saying that to families, it sometimes feels like a commodity that you're going to get the same thing from. You know, it's like trying to buy a Chevy Silverado, like you can call around all day knowing that each one is exactly the same, right, as long as you know the options and whatever. But estate planning is completely different. At every law firm, what you get do? They do the funding, you know, what is the experience of the staff and the firm? There's so many nuances to it that asking.

Uh, right out of the gate, what the price is, is not the right first question,

Kerry Guard 20:07
yeah, it's true. I think, I think

that's where everybody just knows where to start. And like we said, it's most importantly to start and then give your Give your brain a mint to catch up and start thinking through what you need, and is this is the right law firm for you, and if they're going to be able to do it end to end, and really cover you in that regard. So thank you, Michael, for walking us through that. Any last pieces of wisdom as people think about kicking off this process and

Michael Rutkowski 20:38
getting started, just do it. Just so much. It's just, it's just one of those things that so many people procrastinate on that you got to get it done. And I think it's a lot easier to get done than you would think. And so it's time to just act on it. Just do it. You know, we have, there's so many things in estate planning that timing does matter of when you get it done. So I would just say, you know, start the process. If it's on your mind, get it done. I can't tell you how many families after we're done, like they just feel like they can. They tell us that they can sleep better at night because now they have this in place.

Kerry Guard 21:17
Just a great yeah, I will say next week, or the week after, we will be having our customer success director on to walk through some wonderful stories of how we have helped families in case of an emergency, and how they the law firm has really stepped up and stepped in for those families, and most importantly, how to avoid it. We're we're here for you, and we can do it. And you know, how can you get ahead so that you don't have to so I look forward to having that conversation,

Michael. I'm so grateful. As always. If you would like to work with Michael and his team going through this process to plan your state, please call us at 248-955-2842,

or email MLR at ratoski Law Firm, com. Again, the phone number is 248-955-2842,

Michael, before we go

seven days between now and the next one, what are you most looking forward to?

Michael Rutkowski 22:17
Good question. I don't really have anything on. You know, falls in the air. And so we're probably going to, we're in Michigan, so leaves have changed, and we're going to hit the cider mill. I'm excited for that soon, though, we have a family wedding that a lot of people are coming in town for. I'm really excited for that to get some family time.

Kerry Guard 22:37
My wife's brother, who's going to be coming on the show, he has three daughters the same age as my three daughters, and so when they get together, it is just like, see ya. They have so much fun. So I can't wait to for them to see their bestie cousins. So good cousins are the best. Yeah, for sure, awesome. Well, thank you, Michael, thank you to our listeners. If you like this episode. Please like, subscribe and share. This episode is brought to you by the ratoski Law Firm, Michigan's leading asset protection estate planning Medicaid and Elder Law Firm. And again, if you'd like help from our state planning and asset protection needs, please call 248-955-2842,

that's 248-955-2842,

thank you again, Michael, see you next week, my pleasure. See you. Next week, you.