Empowered Legacy Planning is only one of a few Arizona estate planning law firms that offers a trust funding and maintenance program for a simple annual fee. Our maintenance program is a key part of our commitment to helping you create and maintain an estate plan that will meet your goals.

It is important to keep your estate plan up to date. From time to time, your estate planning documents will need to be modified to reflect changes in your family or financial situation. We recommend that you review both your trust as well as your personal net worth on a yearly basis to determine whether any modifications are warranted. Additionally, changes in the law may arise that can affect your estate plan.

For these reasons, we have developed the Empowered Legacy Planning (“ELP”) Maintenance Program, designed to eliminate these problems as well as to reduce the total overall cost of your estate planning (including the original trust drafting fee and update fees, as well as trust settlement fees). The first step to establishing your trust maintenance program is ensuring that your trust has been properly funded.

In order for a Revocable Living Trust based plan to achieve your goals, it is absolutely imperative that during your lifetime you exercise care to ensure that you have transferred ownership of assets into your trust or have changed beneficiary designations to be consistent with your estate planning goals. This process is called trust funding. Because of the critical importance of proper trust funding, in order to enroll in the ELPMaintenance Program, our office will assist you in funding of the assets you identify to us. The cost of trust funding will be outlined in your agreement.

Enrollment in the ELP Maintenance Program gains you access to these services and others outlined in our Benefits, Terms & Conditions:

DOCUMENT UPDATE SERVICES
Annual Review: The goal of the annual plan review is to determine if there is a need for changes to your documents, and it is an opportunity for you to update us on your family and your assets. Each year, the Firm sends a reminder notice to clients who have paid their renewal fees, along with a copy of their most recent Asset Detail Report (“ADR”) and Name & Fiduciary Summary for review.  The Firm requires that clients review and return the ADR and Name & Fiduciary Summary, along with any changes, to our office for review by our Team. 

Word Processing Amendments: Word processing amendments to estate planning documents will be included at no additional fee.  A word processing amendment addresses changes in your personal situation that do not involve significant additional legal counseling.  Examples of word processing amendments: name changes, minor changes in asset distribution, changes in the order of trustees, etc.  It will be necessary for you to attend a delivery meeting where you will sign and execute the new amendment with a team member.

The fees for amendments or restatements that substantially change the structure of the trust or your estate plan will be determined on a case-by-case basis.  For example, a major change in estate tax laws or laws regarding distributions from retirement plans, could require a substantial revision of your plan, which is outside the scope of maintenance.

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
We believe education is an important part of making sure your estate plan is up to date and meeting your current needs and goals. We provide a series of educational workshops regarding estate planning and related issues on a yearly basis for our clients.

ANNUAL FUNDING REVIEW

Annual Funding Review: We will conduct an Annual Funding Review to verify that all newly acquired assets have been titled correctly. While there is no charge for the review, there may be fees associated with funding certain assets, such as real estate and business interests.

If you are interested in learning more about our funding and maintenance services OR feel like these important services are missing from your life, call us! We would love to tell you more about our program and have you join the Empowered Legacy Planning family!