Plan Review & Repair

Most people who have an estate plan believe it still works. Many of them are wrong — not because they were careless when they made it, but because life moved and the plan did not. A trust that was correctly funded in 2012 may have real gaps today. A healthcare directive naming someone who is no longer the right person. A pour-over will that does not match how accounts are currently titled. We read what you have and tell you, honestly, what will actually happen when it has to run.

What makes plans fail

The most common failures we find are not about bad legal work at the time of drafting. They are about things that happened after the signing and never made it back to the documents:

• An unfunded trust — the trust was created but assets were never moved into it, or new assets were acquired and never re-titled in the trust’s name. An unfunded trust is a document. It will not keep your estate out of probate.
• Outdated beneficiary designations — retirement accounts, life insurance, and payable-on-death accounts pass by beneficiary designation, not through your trust or will. If those designations name a deceased spouse, a former partner, or a blank line, the asset goes to the wrong person — or into probate — regardless of what the trust says.
• No current power of attorney — or one so old that financial institutions will not accept it. If you become incapacitated without a valid durable power of attorney, someone will need to petition for conservatorship through the courts to manage your affairs — the very process a well-built plan is designed to avoid.
• A changed family — a marriage, a divorce, the birth of grandchildren, the death of a named trustee or successor. Plans that do not reflect current family structure often distribute to the wrong people or leave gaps no one noticed until it was too late to fill them.
• Changed law — California and federal law governing trusts and estates has shifted substantially over the past decade. Plans built under older rules may no longer accomplish what they were designed to do.

What a review involves

We read your documents — the trust, the pour-over will, both powers of attorney, and the healthcare directive. We check them against your current assets, your current family structure, and the current state of California law. We look at how your accounts are titled, what your beneficiary designations say, and whether the plan as written would actually do what you think it does.

If everything looks solid, we will tell you that and you will leave with real confidence rather than just the assumption that things are fine. If there are problems, we name them specifically — not vague language about “areas of concern,” not pressure to purchase a new plan you do not need. You will know exactly what is wrong, why it matters, and what it would take to correct it.

What repair looks like

Sometimes a review turns up a single outdated form. Sometimes the trust was never funded and needs to be — which is significant work, but work that can be done without replacing the plan entirely. Sometimes a plan needs more substantial revision because of how much has changed. The scope and cost depend on what we find, and we tell you what we found before you decide anything about how to respond.

We do not have an interest in finding problems that are not there, or in replacing documents that are working. If the plan is solid, we say so. If it is not, we fix the specific things that are wrong.

When to have your plan reviewed

A review makes sense any time your life has changed significantly — a marriage or divorce, the death of someone named in your plan, the birth of children or grandchildren, a major change in assets, a move to or from California, or simply the passage of more than three to five years since your plan was last looked at. If you are not sure whether your plan would hold up, a review is the right place to start. The first conversation is always without charge.