{"id":2306,"date":"2011-08-07T13:45:46","date_gmt":"2011-08-07T20:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lichtermanlaw.com\/?p=2306"},"modified":"2015-06-02T17:23:45","modified_gmt":"2015-06-02T21:23:45","slug":"update-review-estate-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lichtermanlaw.com\/index.php\/update-review-estate-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Updating and Reviewing Your Estate Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a Grand Rapids estate planning attorney<\/span><\/a><\/span> I am privileged to meet with great families and to hear their stories.\u00a0 Some of those stories are just starting, some have a good portion already written, and some have been finished.\u00a0 If you’re familiar with me or my previous posts, you will understand why the stories are so important to me and to the type of planning I work on with clients (read previous post here<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

This past week I met with a couple that has a truly remarkable life story.\u00a0 We spent the better part of our meeting\u00a0having them share the story they’ve written so far and how we could make sure their estate plan would help them write the rest of their story during their life and after they pass on.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the conversation I discovered that they had previously done planning with another attorney over 20 years ago.\u00a0 And guess what?\u00a0 Their plan had not been looked at, reviewed or revised since then.\u00a0 Some of the documents couldn’t even be found.\u00a0 Now this didn’t surprise me in and of itself.\u00a0 I’ve met with many wonderful families that took their estate plan documentation home from their attorney’s office, stuck it on a shelf, let it gather dust and never thought of it again.\u00a0 There was no followup from their attorney other than they typical statement that “you should review your plan every 3 to 5 years, so give me a call then and we’ll review it.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet for these great folks (and the others whose plans I’ve reviewed) time marched on.\u00a0 Their life changed, the law changed, their assets changed and the life story they are writing changed.\u00a0 In this particular case, the life story changed A LOT!\u00a0 So much so that they asked me, “our current plan is so far off base now, can we just go ahead and trash it and start over?”<\/span><\/p>\n

After careful review and discussion of their 20+ year old plan, we did just that.\u00a0 We spent the next several hours designing a plan that was based on their story – their past, their present and their hopes for the future.\u00a0 And with a plan tailored to their specific story, they have added peace of mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

But we didn’t stop there.\u00a0 They were delighted to hear about the Lichterman Law Difference and how we include ongoing 3 year reviews in all of our planning levels.\u00a0 Yes, that’s right.\u00a0 For no extra charge we followup with them every 3 years to review their plan, their story and how both relate to current law at that time.\u00a0 The key is that we<\/span> followup with them every three years.<\/span><\/p>\n

I know how life can be and more importantly, that you have a life<\/span>!\u00a0 It doesn’t surprise me that few families review their plan every 3 to 5 years.\u00a0 Life is busy and it gets pushed to the side, if it’s even a thought.\u00a0 And yet here I am, an attorney whose passion is estate planning and I’m thinking about it every day.\u00a0 Seems like a no-brainer that I should followup with them.\u00a0 And that way you can enjoy life and continue writing your life story.<\/span><\/p>\n

The key to the story is this – you have a story you are writing as you live your life, don’t let the story be tarnished by not having an estate plan or, potentially worse, having one that becomes “stale” and fails when it is needed most.\u00a0 Why wouldn’t you give us a call to ensure you have a plan the carries out your story (or revise your plan to help it “catch up”)?\u00a0 Call us at 616-827-7596 today!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a Grand Rapids estate planning attorney I am privileged to meet with great families and to hear their stories.\u00a0 Some of those stories are just starting, some have a good portion already written, and some have been finished.\u00a0 If you’re familiar with me or my previous posts, you will understand why the stories are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[16,30,38,18,35,17,120,121,75,40],"class_list":["post-2306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-estate-planning","tag-grand-rapids-estate-planning","tag-grand-rapids-estate-planning-lawyer","tag-grand-rapids-michigan-estate-planning-lawyer","tag-grand-rapids-trusts","tag-grand-rapids-trusts-lawyer","tag-grand-rapids-wills","tag-michigan-estate-planning","tag-michigan-wills-and-trusts","tag-wills-and-trusts-attorney-grand-rapids-michigan","tag-wyoming-mi-estate-planning-lawyer"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lichtermanlaw.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lichtermanlaw.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lichtermanlaw.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lichtermanlaw.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lichtermanlaw.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2306"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.lichtermanlaw.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3620,"href":"https:\/\/www.lichtermanlaw.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2306\/revisions\/3620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lichtermanlaw.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lichtermanlaw.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lichtermanlaw.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}