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November 6, 2020 is “National Love Your Lawyer Day,” which started in 2001 as a way to celebrate lawyers for their positive contributions and encourage the public to view lawyers in a more favorable light. As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we’re dedicated to improving the public’s perception of lawyers by offering family-centered legal services specifically tailored to provide our clients with the kind of love, attention, and trust we’d want for our own loved ones. With that in mind, this post gives some insight into how this vision for a new law business model first came about.

If you’re like most people, you likely think estate planning is just one more task to check off of your life’s endless “to-do” list.

You may shop around and find a lawyer to create planning documents for you, or you might try creating your own DIY plan using online documents. Then, you’ll put those documents into a drawer, mentally check estate planning off your to-do list, and forget about them.

The problem is, estate planning is not a one-and-done type of deal.

In fact, if it’s not regularly updated when your assets, family situation, and the laws change, your plan will be worthless. What’s more, failing to update your plan can create its own set of problems that can leave your family worse off than if you’d never created a plan at all.

The following true story illustrates the consequences of not updating your plan, and it happened to the founder and CEO of New Law Business Model, Ali Katz. Indeed, this experience was one of the leading catalysts for her to create the new, family-centered model of estate planning we use with all of our clients.

When Ali was in law school, her father-in-law died. He’d done his estate planning—or at least thought he had. He paid a Florida law firm roughly $3000 to prepare an estate plan for him, so his family wouldn’t be stuck dealing with the hassles and expense of court or drawn into needless conflict with his ex-wife.

And yet, after his death, that’s exactly what did happen. His family was forced to go to court in order to claim assets that were supposed to pass directly to them. And on top of that, they had to deal with his ex-wife and her attorneys in the process.

Ali couldn’t understand it. If her father-in-law paid $3,000 for an estate plan, why were his loved ones dealing with the court and his ex-wife? It turned out that not only had his planning documents not been updated, but his assets were not even properly titled.

Ali’s father-in-law created a trust, so that when he died, his assets would pass directly to his family, and they wouldn’t have to endure. But some of his assets had never been transferred into the name of his trust from the beginning. And since there was no updated inventory of his assets, there was no way for his family to even confirm everything he had when he died. To this day, one of his accounts is still stuck in the Florida Department of Unclaimed Property.

Ali thought for sure this must be malpractice. But after working for one of the best law firms in the country and interviewing other top estate-planning lawyers across the country, she confirmed what happened to her father-in-law wasn’t malpractice at all. In fact, it was common practice.

This inspired Ali to take action. When she started her own law firm, she did so with the intention and commitment that she would ensure her clients’ plans would work when their families needed it and create a service model built around that mission.

We hear similar stories from our clients all the time. In fact, outside of not creating any plan at all, one of the most common planning mistakes we encounter is when we get called by the loved ones of someone who has become incapacitated or died with a plan that no longer works. Yet by that point, it’s too late, and the loved ones left behind are forced to deal with the aftermath.

We recommend you review your plan annually to make sure it’s up to date, and immediately amend your plan following events like divorce, deaths, births, and inheritances. This is so important, we’ve created proprietary systems designed to ensure these updates are made for all of our clients, so you don’t need to worry about whether you’ve overlooked anything as your family, the law, and your assets change over time.

Furthermore, because your plan is designed to protect and provide for your loved ones in the event of your death or incapacity, we aren’t just here to serve you—we’re here to serve your entire family. We take the time to get to know your family members and include them in the planning process, so everyone affected by your plan is well-aware of what your latest planning strategies are and why you made the choices you did.

Unfortunately, many estate planning firms do not engage with the whole family when creating estate plans, leaving the spouse and other loved ones largely out of the loop. We believe the planning process works best when all of your loved ones are educated and engaged. We can even facilitate regular family meetings to keep everyone up-to-date.

With us as your Personal Family Lawyer®, our planning services go far beyond simply creating documents and then never seeing you again. In fact, we’ll develop a relationship with your family that lasts not only for your lifetime, but for the lifetime of your children and their children, if that’s your wish.

We’ll support you in not only creating a plan that keeps your family out of court and out of conflict in the event of your death or incapacity, but they’ll also ensure your plan is regularly updated to make certain that it works and is there for your family when you cannot be. Contact us today to get started.

Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. If you’re ready to create a comprehensive estate plan, contact us to schedule your Family Wealth Planning Session. Even if you already have a plan in place, we will review it and help you bring it up to date to avoid heartache for your family. Schedule online today.

For many entrepreneurs, being a “workaholic” is the default status. Though such drive and dedication can be positive in short bursts, in the long run it leads to stagnation, burnout, and worse. Have you thought about doing an entrepreneurial retreat?

Just as experts advise us to step away from what we’re working on for short breaks throughout the day to maximize creativity, the same applies on the macro scale. An ideal way to escape the insane pressures of running a company is to attend one of the numerous different entrepreneurial retreats available.

Entrepreneurial retreats are specifically designed to remove stressed-out business owners from their demanding daily routines, so they can focus on improving themselves mentally, physically, and/or spiritually. While there are dozens of different retreats to choose from, most offer a blend of personal and professional development activities aimed at giving attendees a chance to relax and recharge their creative batteries.

If you’re not sold yet, here are four reasons you should consider taking a little extra “me time” by attending a retreat. They can be one of the most beneficial events you can attend for both yourself and your business.

It’s far too easy to stay trapped in the “busy bubble” by throwing ourselves into the daily demand of running a business for months—or even years—at a time without a significant break. This can easily lead to tunnel vision, exhaustion, and health issues if you don’t disconnect from those responsibilities on a regular basis.

By attending a retreat once or twice a year, you’ll have the much-needed time and space to slow down, relax, and look within to more fully develop yourself, not just your business strategy. Recharging your creative energy in this way frequently results in a renewed sense of motivation, focus, and vision, which you can use to enhance your business upon returning.

Even though retreats are a terrific way to disconnect from the daily grind, many also provide the option to engage in professional-development training through coaching, seminars, and workshops.

So beyond personal development through quiet introspection, you can also use these retreats to hone your business and leadership acumen as well. Not only is this a good option for those who find it difficult to spend a week or more doing nothing “productive,” but it also allows you to write off the cost of the retreat on your taxes as a business expense.

Entrepreneurs are a special breed of people, and it can be extraordinarily beneficial to surround yourself with a group of like-minded peers. Doing so provides a valuable sense of community, social support, and networking opportunities.

Who knows, maybe the guy you meet doing yoga or ziplining has encountered and overcome the very same challenge you’re currently facing. Or maybe he can recommend another professional who can help with your next big project. Or maybe you are that person for him. Or maybe you two simply hit it off and become lifelong friends.

No matter who you meet  at a retreat, there’s the real potential that those people can become trusted allies and even partners long after the retreat is over.