Top Things To Do Before Meeting With An Estate Planning Attorney

If you want to make sure that your money, assets, and affairs are all handled properly when you pass away, you could be thinking about meeting with an estate planning attorney. This can be a good thing to do, but it's best if you're properly prepared beforehand. For example, these are some of the top things to do before your appointment with an estate planning attorney.

Understand Why You Should Meet an Estate Planning Attorney

First, you should understand why you should meet with an estate planning attorney. If you're still a young adult and if you're healthy, you might not be too worried about it. This might also be true if you don't have a lot of money or assets. However, it's a good idea for any adult to handle estate planning. In particular, you'll want to work with a lawyer when doing so. They might think about things that you haven't thought about, and they'll be more aware of the laws, paperwork, and processes that are involved in estate planning. Even though you'll need to pay the lawyer for their services, you'll probably find it's well worth it to meet with an estate planning attorney sometime soon if you haven't done so already.

Find the Right Attorney

Of course, you should find the right estate planning attorney to help you. If you have specific circumstances, such as high assets or multiple businesses or real estate, you'll want to find an estate planning attorney who has experience with these types of situations. If you have a legal relationship with some other type of lawyer, you can always ask them for recommendations about the best estate planning attorneys in your area.

Gather Information

Before you meet with your estate planning attorney, you should gather information about your different bank accounts and balances, assets, and more. This will help your lawyer get a better picture of the planning that needs to be done, and they'll have the information that they need when it's time to start filling out paperwork and getting everything started.

Consult With Family

You may want to talk to some of your family members about things like who will be your beneficiary for your will and who is interested in which assets. Doing this before you meet with your lawyer will give you a good starting point when you start talking to your lawyer.

As you can see, there are a few things you should ideally do before meeting with an estate planning attorney. When you call to schedule your appointment for your estate planning consultation, your lawyer should be able to give you more information about what you should do to prepare.

Contact an estate planning attorney to learn more.