Estate Planning

• Do you know what would happen legally – to you, your loved ones, your money and everything else you care about – if something unexpected happened to you?

• If you have an estate plan and it's out of date, your assets could be lost to the State Department of Unclaimed Property, or to an unnecessary Court process.

• If you don’t have an estate plan, the state of California has a plan for you. And, it's probably not what you would want.

• If you don't know exactly what would happen for everyone you love and everything you own, then the first step is to find out exactly what would happen, legally and financially, so that you can decide if the current state of your affairs is okay with you.

We conduct a Family Wealth Planning Session, where we spend time together and you’ll get informed.  Before your Family Wealth Planning Session, you will complete a Family Wealth Inventory and Assessment, which will help you to get clear about what you own and what you have to think about when it comes to planning for the well-being and care of your loved ones and loved belongings. If you decide the current state of affairs is unacceptable, and if we both decide that it’s a fit to work together, then we can design an estate plan together that will best suit the needs of your family.

The foundation of your estate plan will often include a revocable living trust; you transfer your property into this trust for your benefit during your life. One of the benefits of a revocable living trust is that, when done correctly and maintained over time, your estate plan should help your family to avoid the cost and delay of probate and minimize or eliminate estate taxes.

For people with additional needs, we provide advanced estate planning services.

  Unfortunately, most plans don't work because much of what passes for estate planning is little more than word processing. You are asked a few questions and then the drafter decides which "plan" is right for you, and fits you into a template. This is not estate planning; it is little more than a “search and replace” of your family’s name and then a hit of the “print” button which spits out form documents. 

 Your Personal Family Lawyer™ at The Law Offices of Heather Pietroforte will educate you, take the time to get to know you, your family, your concerns, your goals and your issues and will gladly and patiently answer all your questions to produce an estate plan that is exactly right for you and will keep your loved one's out of court and out of conflict.