Did you ever notice that a lot of attorneys don’t want to publish their rates, or give you a straight answer when you ask about the price of their services? It’s frustrating, isn’t it? People want to know the cost of something before they decide to retain someone’s services. Telling people “It depends” or quoting an hourly rate without translating that into a “bottom line” price isn’t a good way to do business, in my opinion.

So let me break that mold.

$2,700

That is the fee I will charge to consult with you on your estate plan, put together your family trust, two wills, two Power of Attorney appointments, two Advance Health Care Directives, and all other documents necessary to the trust. (Do you have pets? I’ll also include a pet trust, if you’d like). I’ll also make sure that your deeds are recorded, and that all of your estate planning documents are bound together in an easily locatable, easily identifiable, indexed binder. And of course, it will all be backed up on digital storage media. You’ll also be responsible for costs such as recording fees and mailing, but that’s likely to be minimal. My practice is to take a $200 advance on costs as well as the full fee amount upon commencement of work. The $200 should more than cover all costs. Of course, all costs will be accounted for, and whatever is not used to pay for costs will be refunded to you.

Does the $2,700 fee cover every conceivable estate plan? Clearly not. But it will apply to the vast majority of estate plans, and it will probably cover yours. If you have more than $10 million in assets, then I’ll probably have to do some additional work that would increase my fee.

NOTE: I’ve been asked if this same rate would apply to a single person’s estate plan. The reality is that doing an estate plan for a married couple isn’t a whole lot more work than doing one for a single person. Sure there are fewer documents with a single person. But in estate planning, the real work is in the advice / planning and not the printing of documents. The “single person discount” thus must reflect that the amount of work, and value of the work, is substantially similar. For this reason, my fee for a single person is $2,300.00