The April issue of Legal Technology News (LTN) Magazine has a feature entitled “No Bricks, No Mortar: A virtual practice helps solo attorney Stephanie Kimbro devote more time to clients and her family.”  To read the full article, you have to sign up for free registration to the site.

From the article:

Kimbro’s practice includes preparing the usual documents of an estate practice, but “there is a large consultation and education component,” she says, such as helping clients choose a potential guardian or trustee for a child, “and this is the part of my practice that I enjoy the most.”…

“Most clients are aware that the use of the technology makes the delivery process more efficient, which means that the cost savings from that end up lowering their legal fees,” she says. “The use of cloud computing means I can avoid the higher overhead associated with a traditional law firm, and the tech helps me streamline the process of generating the work and communicating with the client online — all of those cost savings means I can make the process more affordable and convenient for the client.”

Are you married to someone who is ten years or more older or younger than you?

Professor Gerry Beyer over at the Wills, Trusts and Estate Professor Blog makes note of the need for individuals in these relationships to consider drafting their estate and retirement plans to reflect the age gap and the benefits and penalties that may be affected by this difference.

Beyer pulls his suggestions from a Forbes article focusing on retirement strategies that recommends re-evaluating pensions, 401(k) plans and social security for maximum benefits. There may be techniques that could be used to protect the younger spouse in the relationship both through estate planning and changing the retirement strategy for the couple. Most of my clients drafting their estate planning for the first time are separated by less than five years in age, but estate planning for couples with a greater age separation is even more important. If you are ready to talk about your plans with a licensed NC estate planning attorney, please register for a secure online account to request legal services.

A pair of my favorite estate planning clients revisited me this month for an update to their estate planning. I suspect they have our virtual checkups scheduled on their calendar for the same time every year. Like clockwork, they come back every two years on the same month.

One of the benefits of my virtual law office is that all of the contents of the case files are date and time stamped. My clients and I can easily locate the last time we talked and review exactly what we discussed and even access the last version of their documents. It’s nice to have that record to return to. Much like a patient’s medical history, it’s a record of this family’s legal planning for their future. We can pick up from the background we’ve already established.

Unfortunately, most of my clients do not follow up like this couple. I send out reminders to clients that they should consider reevaluating their estate planning every few years, and many will get back in touch, but following through with the full checkup takes longer.  Estate planning gets pushed to the bottom of the priority list.

My husband and I are guilty of it ourselves. We make regular checkups for our children at the pediatrician. We schedule dentist appointments for every member of the family. But regular “legal checkups” for estate planning are the easiest to push off into another month.

Why is this? I certainly know the value of reviewing legal documents every few years. There are two reasons I think this may be the case for most of us: 1) The death of ourselves or our loved ones is the last thing healthy people want to think about, and 2) for most people, there is no perceived immediacy.  Your child needs to visit the pediatrician for vaccines before being allowed to enter school. Your teeth will be in bad shape and potentially in pain if you don’t have them regularly cleaned. Your death is hopefully a long ways off.

Aside from scheduling your legal estate planning checkup to recur on the calendar each year at the same time, how can you make the process less likely to fall through the cracks?

Here are a couple of ideas (and yes, I plan on following my own advice on this one for my own family’s legal checkup):

1. Death may not feel impending, but taxes happen every year. Think about having your estate planning reevaluated during tax season each year as part of that process. This is a great time because you are also looking at your financial status and can work with any changes in that which may need to be reflected in your legal documents.

2. Try to incorporate a discussion about estate planning into your family events throughout the year when your named guardians, executors, trustees, etc. may be in the room. That is not possible in some family situations, but I know of brother and sister teams that will get on each other’s cases about going in for their legal checkup. Or grandparents who will put some pressure on their kids to make sure their legal affairs are up to date. Having friends, such as those in a mother’s or other parenting group, who will talk about these issues and remind each other to get it done and keep it updated, might be helpful.

3. Don’t hide from your estate planning lawyer throughout the year. Keep in touch. I actually care about my clients. It’s the reason I chose this practice area.  I want to hear how my clients and their families are doing. If you don’t want that kind of relationship with your lawyer, then just register for their blog or for the email newsletters so that you will have the occasional email reminder that you need to schedule that checkup coming to your inbox every couple of months.

I look forward to hearing from some of you during your next estate planning legal checkup.

Law Technology News featured an article this week entitled “Q & A: Inside Stephanie Kimbro’s Virtual Law Practice“.  In the article, the reporter asks me about why I started my law practice, what it’s like to work with clients online and other details about my practice.

From the article:

LTN: What does your average daily work schedule look like?

SLK: When a new client registers on my virtual law office or an existing client sends me a note or other action, I receive an activity alert on my smartphone. I usually start my day at 8 a.m. and address these alerts first by logging into the secure site. Then I will continue to work on projects for clients. I unbundle estate planning but will also do some work for small business clients.

My clients actually prefer to work with me during their off times, so the traditional 9 [a.m.] – 5 [p.m.] business office hours are not convenient for them because they are at work. So most of my clients will do things at 5 or 6 a.m. before work or after their kids are in bed in the evenings. Which is actually when I also want to work so I can have more time to spend with my family and my children when they get home from school in the afternoons. If a client has scheduled a web conference or call, then I will do this, but most of my clients prefer to communicate completely inside the secure client portal.

You can read the rest of the interview here. 

The following video shows you how to use your client account on Kimbro Legal Services, including where to request legal services and about all of the different features that we may use to communicate and work together on your NC estate planning needs.

If you are an existing client of Kimbro Legal Services you will notice that the technology has been upgraded in the past month to provide additional features and a new user interface. If you have any questions about the use of your secure client account after registering, please ask the attorney in the “discussion” section. (As stated in the terms of use for the technology, registration on the site to request legal services does not automatically form an attorney/client relationship.)

This January marks the sixth year that I have been delivering legal services to clients online through this secure virtual law office.

I founded this practice at the end of January 2006, but did not get up and running strong with it until May of that year. I have been honored to serve clients who have found this method of legal service to be more affordable and convenient for their legal needs. I look forward to continuing to form online attorney/client relationships with new clients in the future and hearing back from existing clients as they need updates.

In the next couple of weeks, the user interface for my virtual law office will be changing to a newer, more sleek version. It is the culmination of the hard work that the team at Total Attorneys, my husband as a senior programmer and myself, have put in over the past two and half years to transition the software platform from the original version, developing out the features list that we had accumulated over several years from my own practice and from other attorneys using the software and providing feedback. I’m very excited to offer my clients this new version of the software and the additional features it offers us for communication and the delivery of services online.

I found a post I had written in May of 2006 on my other blog about my goals for the virtual law office: “I am just beginning to build the law firm’s business, but I am highly optimistic that it will be a productive method of providing cost-effective and efficient legal services for people who have questions about North Carolina law.”

Thank you to my clients for helping me achieve that goal. I look forward to the next six years and the development of future technology that will further enable online legal service delivery.

I wish you and your family a Wonderful Holiday Season and a Happy New Year!

For the months of December and January, I am offering 15% off of any estate planning services listed on the law office website. This also includes updating estate planning documents.

Existing estate planning documents may need to be updated for a number of reasons, such as the birth or adoption of a new child, a death in the family, changes to the guardians you have named for your children, divorce, changes in your financial circumstances or any other reason why you might need to see changes reflected in your estate planning.

Make a New Year’s Resolution to get your estate planning in order for yourself and your loved ones. 

Take advantage of this Holiday Gift by contacting us today or registering for a secure online account.

Clients sometimes want to understand how much control a Last Will and Testament can provide them over their estates. If they leave a sum of money to a child, grandchild or other relative, can they dictate where that beneficiary spends their money?

A Will is limited in its ability to provide instructions to beneficiaries on how to spend or save their inheritance. The primary purpose of the Will is to transfer the estate assets to the proper parties after all debts have been paid. However, there are a few ways of drafting a Will to let clients make their wishes known.

For example, if the beneficiary is under the age of 18 and a minor, the testator (individual making the Will) may want to establish a testamentary (meaning “in the Will”) trust for minor children. This trust is written as a separate provision of the Will and names a trustee who will distribute portions of the trust at the designation of the testator. I have had some clients dictate that the funds shall only be released to the child upon their acceptance into college and then only for books and tuition until they reach a certain age.  Other clients will prefer to break the distribution out into two portions, ensuring that their beneficiaries are not receiving a single, lump sum of money upon turning age 18. There are other trusts that may be established outside of the Will, such as a Living Trust, which must be properly funded. These methods provide more control than the direct distributions to beneficiaries provided by a basic Will.

Other clients decide to provide in the Will their personal statements and suggestions about how they believe their beneficiaries should spend the funds. For some, they prefer this option to the creation of a testamentary or separate trust. Customized provisions may be drafted into a Will or into a separate document that explains these wishes to the beneficiary.

There are tax and other implications that may come into play when deciding who, when and how to distribute an estate to beneficiaries. It is important to consult with an attorney regarding your own specific situation and needs.

Wills are very personal legal documents. While they need to cite specific state laws and hold up as a legal document, there is room for customization of the document which if handled properly may provide your family and friends with the reassurance that they are following your final wishes.

If you would like to speak with an attorney about making your final wishes for family and friends known in your NC estate planning documents, please contact us today.

Parents and grandparents should consider drafting or updating their NC estate planning documents after the birth or adoption of a child.  A few basic estate planning documents may provide your family with important legal protections.

Listed below are some essential reasons why these steps are so important for your family.

1. If you don’t have a Last Will and Testament and both you and your spouse pass away at the same time, your children may be placed into the care of the department of social services until the court system can determine who would be the best guardian for them. The court has the final say in the matter.

2. If you have named a guardian and secondary guardian in your Will, your children can remain safely with those individuals until they are formally appointed as guardians by the court. Your Will tells the court who you want to raise your children in the event of the death of both you and your spouse. Your Will also tells the court how you want the assets of your estate to distributed to your children for the purposes of their health care, education, etc.

3.  If only one of you passes away, you want to provide enough money for your spouse to care for your children. Having a Will can ensure that your spouse receives the money he or she needs faster. Set up a trust for your child. Determine how and when the assets of that trust should be distributed to your child. Designate a trustee to administer that trust.

4.  Naming the Executor/Executrix of your estate ensures that your spouse or the named guardian of your children will know who to turn to during a time of grieving and that person will be able to administer your estate more simply and with less expense than if you had not appointed anyone.

5.  In your Will you can make specific bequests of property to your children or other loved ones, such as a family heirloom to your daughter or a stamp collection to your son. This helps to ensure that your children receive exactly what you want them to have. Also, writing these bequests down in a Will can oftentimes prevent inter-family squabbles about who was meant to receive what.

6.  Let your family know how you want your funeral and burial to be handled. This takes the stress of having to make those decisions off of grieving loved ones.

7.  Because every individual circumstance is different, consult with an attorney regarding your family’s individual estate planning needs or contact us today by registering for a secure online account to request a free legal consultation.

The need to provide for loved ones in the event of a death is not limited only to married couples. However, state laws were created to provide protection based on marriage and blood alone. There are situations where an individual needs or wants to create estate planning for a partner or close friend and the existing state laws regarding intestacy (an estate without a Will) will not help them. With the numbers of unmarried individuals living together on the rise, some of them may want to think about the effect that the lack of an estate plan could have on their partner.

If you have a relationship where you would like to provide for a significant other after your death, consider drafting the following estate planning documents:

1. Create a Will. Be careful to specifically include the name of the individual you wish to be your beneficiary. Many Will templates will use the word “spouse” or husband or wife by default. Have your lawyer review the language of the document to make sure it will be enforced the way you intend.

2. Durable Power of Attorney. Set this up recognizing the enormous amount of power and authority that it gives the other individual to sign anything in your name, to transfer property, to spend your money when you are incapacitated, among other powers that may be drafted into the document.

3. Health Care Power of Attorney and other medical directives. These are important to have not only so that you can make your last wishes for medical care known to your partner and any caregivers, but also so that the partner will be given access to you in the hospital as a designated health care attorney-in-fact.  There have been cases, although hopefully not as frequently anymore, where partners have been denied entry to a hospital room to be with their loved one simply because they could not prove that they were a spouse or relative.

Kimbro Legal Services has experience drafting estate planning documents for non-traditional families and unmarried couples. If you would like a free consultation to discuss what options might be best for your situation, please register for a secure online account.