ESTATE PLANNING Richard H. Agnew, Jr. Attorney at Law

When people come to see me they sometimes ask me, "What is Estate Planning?" My initial response to them is that I ask them to tell me first what are their concerns. "Why are you here to see me?" and I just sit back and listen to my client tell me what is going on in their life and the concerns that they have.

If you are telling me that you are concerned about how your affairs will be handled after you pass away or you are concerned about how things will be handled when you are no longer able to handle them yourself because of some unforeseen disability or you have gotten on in years and you do not want to put your family through hell in dealing with guardianship or having the family turmoil that occurs in probate court, then we are talking about Estate Planning. Estate Planning has nothing to do about how much money you have. Estate Planning is about how much you love your family and how much you want to protect them from the impact of your aging and disability, and your eventual passing on.

Estate Planning is just simply loving those who love you and doing something about it.

Estate Planning is not complex even though there are those out there who make it sound complex to justify their fees.

Estate Planning for me is just listening to you and understanding your concerns and your desires for your family. And then once you feel that I understand your concerns and your goals then I just simply use the tools of my trade to draw up the necessary legal documents that make it happen for you. It just is not that complex because if I make it complex for you and your family then it will not work.

True, for some the situation seems to be complex with multiple marriages and different sets of children and there is that concern for some with estates tax and the such. The objective of an effective Estate Plan is to take that which is complex and deal with it in such a manner as to make the accomplishment of your life time dreams simple in its execution.

My clients want their estate plans to WORK - they want it to accomplish the mission objective to protect their family from guardianship and probate and to protect their assets from estate taxes.

If you feel that you need to do some estate planning or you feel the estate plan that you currently have is not adequate, then give me a call to talk about it. My job is to help you protect your assets and give you peace of mind. My firm takes care of people in the Washington DC area. Call me - 703 494-0839 I want to listen to what you have to say.