Carlsbad Trust attorney, Andrew Fesler, discusses the process for creating a trust package. As a leading attorney in Carlsbad, California, he specializes in estate administration and probate, trust administration, advance directives, business succession planning, and all aspects of estate planning. To learn more about how a trust package and will work together in estate planning, please contact our office, The Law Office of Andrew Fesler, at (760) 444-0943 or message us online.
Transcript:
When a client first calls me, the first thing I do is talk to them to get to know a little about them and figure out what it is they need. For most people, if they own a house in California and they don’t have any planning yet and they have a family, they’re probably going to need a trust package, which includes the trust document, a will or wills if they’re a couple, powers of attorney, and advanced healthcare directive, along with some ancillary documents that help fund the trust and do a few other things like transfer their house into the trust. Once we’ve decided they’re going to need a trust, the next step is I send them an intake form, which gets their personal information, some of their asset information, information about their family, and then, once that’s done, we set an appointment to discuss the intake, which can be on the phone. It can be via video conference. It can be in person. During that appointment, which lasts an hour to an hour and a half, I typically will ask a lot of questions about their family because I want to get to know my clients and all the things that might affect their planning going forward, even if the client doesn’t necessarily think it’s particularly important, and we’ll find out from that intake appointment where they want their assets to go, who they want to manage their assets in case of their demise, who they’d like to help manage their assets if they’re incapacitated, or if they need somebody to make healthcare decisions for them.
I’ll get all that information through the intake appointment, and then I’ll draft documents. Depending on how busy I am, it can take a week, couple of weeks to get those documents back to them, and then they review them. I typically like to highlight the stuff that I find to be particularly important and interesting to the client, and then, of course, they can read the whole thing. They can ask questions about every paragraph if they want, but once they’ve read the draft, we do another usually shorter call to discuss the documents, make any corrections or changes they might have, answer all their questions, make sure they’re comfortable with them. Then we can finalize the documents and set a signing appointment, and that just depends on how soon the client and I am able to find an appointment that’s suitable for both of us.
We do the signing appointment, which usually takes 45 minutes to an hour, and then I take the documents and scan the signed documents into my system so I have electronic backups for the client. I collate everything together into a binder for them, give them a USB drive with the PDF electronic versions of their documents, and send everything back to them, and we then finish the funding process. I have their deed recorded to transfer their house or other real estate into the trust. The clients contact their banks to transfer their accounts into their trust. I’ll help, of course, with that process in any way I can, but of course, the banks aren’t going to let some random lawyer call up and transfer my clients’ assets away from them so they have to take care of that part.
Overall, about eight weeks is the average probably for me. If clients really want to get it done in six, we can do that. We’ve even done four, but that’s the entire process. It’s really fairly simple from the clients’ side, and from my side, I just need to make sure I get enough good information to know that I’m accomplishing what the clients want to.
