Many people think they know what an estate plan is and what it does. And while you are already an “expert” in estate planning because you know the details of your life better than anyone else, it helps to have a guide who can walk you through the complicated legal aspects of an effective plan.
“Sure. You’re going to the ‘library.'” (wink, wink)
It was the secretary’s second week at the big law firm downtown. Here and there she filled in at the front desk when the receptionist was on break. The law firm took up an entire floor, and one of the young new attorneys (who had been told to make sure the receptionist knew where he was), would frequently stick his head in the reception area and say, “I’ll be in the library if you need me.” After this happened quite a few times, the secretary thought, “The library, huh? Well, I guess you could call it that.”
It was a few more weeks before the secretary found out that the law firm did indeed have a library on the next floor of the building! (This was back in the days when lawyers used books instead of computers for research.) The attorney was truly going to the library, while all the while the secretary thought he was making an awful lot of trips to the ‘library.’ You know, the kind many of us have 2.5 of in our houses!
That young attorney was David Edwards when he started at his first big firm in downtown Springfield. Dave and the secretary had a good chuckle about it after they finally realized what she had been thinking. You see, sometimes we don’t even know what we don’t know.
The secretary had never been to the library and no one had ever told her about it. So, of course, she was a little suspicious when that young new attorney kept telling her he was headed to the library.
We find the same goes for estate planning. People have a lot of misinformation about estate planning – what Wills can and can’t do. Who needs a Trust and who doesn’t. There are also a lot of misconceptions that lead to wrong assumptions.
Unfortunately, in estate planning, these wrong assumptions can cost families thousands of dollars. They can also destroy families, and add a lot of extra stress at an already difficult time of grieving.
The stakes are very high in estate planning. That’s why it’s so important to get it right.
Education is foundational to what we do at Edwards Group. One of the things people love most about our staff is they can take the complex topic of estate planning and put it into everyday plain language. We encourage you to poke around our website to continuing learning more about effective estate planning. If you’re ready to get started (which is oftentimes the hardest step), give us a call at 217-726-9200 to make an appointment for your Initial Meeting.