At De Fonte Law PC, we strive to make the entire client experience, from the initial inquiry to the final meeting, positive, collaborative, and productive.
Attention to detail, compassion, and a Ph.D. in paranoia drives our entire estate planning process.
Ensuring all our clients take away a comprehensive estate plan that empowers their heirs, preserves family harmony, and promotes their values, is our mission!
Estate planning is an intimate process and finding the right lawyer is important. Our twenty-minute complimentary consultation with an attorney is your opportunity to interview us and determine whether we are the right law firm for you.
Once a client has decided to hire us, we schedule our first substantive meeting. During this meeting, we will review your intake forms, learn about you, your family, and your inner circle of loved ones. A line-by-line asset review and a discussion about your insurance, tax preparation, and financial advisory is an important component of this meeting. At the end of this meeting, you will be ready to tell us who is in charge and who gets what, when, and how.
While we will send you documents for your review, we insist that all clients meet with us to review the documents. We feel that only through this process can we ensure that our clients understand the purpose and function of each document and are confident in their choice of agents and successors. It is an opportunity to make changes to the documents and ask the lawyer all of your questions.
Your estate plan is not your documents; it is what you do with your documents. A revocable trust will fail if you have not transferred your assets to that trust. During this meeting, we will review the tools you will need to fund your trust and maintain it over time successfully.
With your permission, we will send your financial advisor, tax advisors, insurance brokers and agents, and your corporate counsel copies of documents that will enable them to assist you in funding your trust. We will send you emails on a variety of topics, such as digital assets and document sharing, over the three months after you sign. Every client receives a yearly reminder to review their estate plan portfolio, and we offer a complimentary meeting every three years.
Technically correct documents are not enough. We call it “lazy estate planning” when an estate plan checks the legal boxes but stops short of planning for your actual life.
| Typical Estate Plan | De Fonte Law PC Estate Plan |
|---|---|
| Revocable Living Trust focused primarily on probate avoidance and distributing assets at specified ages. | A Revocable Living Trust built around the people who will actually live with it. We don't do lazy estate planning. We do not simply ask, “At what ages should your children receive their inheritance?” and plug 25, 30, and 35 into a document. We don't use ages. Instead, we talk about what you want the trust to accomplish for the people you love. Our trusts include Well-Being Objectives designed to keep the beneficiary - not simply the money - at the center of trust administration. We consider how trust assets can support education, housing, health, family, meaningful experiences, and a beneficiary's changing needs over a lifetime. We also build in flexible trustee provisions, including the ability to appoint ancillary trustees, so specialized assets such as real estate, businesses, or intellectual property can be managed by someone with the appropriate expertise. |
| Pour-Over Will and General Assignment | Pour-Over Will and General Assignment carefully drafted to exclude foreign assets. We do not want a standard catch-all provision inadvertently sweeping foreign property into a California estate plan. For parents, the Pour-Over Will is also crafted with privacy in mind, keeping detailed information about your children and nominated guardians in a separate, private guardianship document. |
| Guardians named in a Will | A separate, detailed Nomination of Guardians - and we make a very big deal about it. Naming a guardian is only the beginning. We document why you chose them, who you do and do not want considered, the important people in your children's lives, and your parenting values. We can address maintaining important relationships, travel, education, activities, religion and traditions, pets, and financial resources that may help a guardian care for your children. Your children deserve more than a name buried in a Will. |
| Durable Power of Attorney | California Uniform Statutory Power of Attorney PLUS our detailed long-form Durable Power of Attorney. Our incapacity planning is designed for real life - not simply the most predictable form of incapacity. |
| Standard Advance Health Care Directive | An individualized Advance Health Care Directive that reflects who you actually are. Our planning can address LGBTQIA+ concerns, gender identity and chosen family, pregnancy, religious beliefs, cultural values, end-of-life wishes, visitation, and the people you do - or do not - want involved in your care. |
| Trust Transfer Deed | Review of how your California real estate is currently titled, preparation of trust transfer deeds when included in your plan, and counsel regarding potential property-tax reassessment and capital-gains considerations. |
| HIPAA Authorization | HIPAA planning that supports the people you actually want involved in your care, rather than treating medical privacy as another box to check. If there are people who absolutely should never receive information about you, we can specifically exclude them. |
| Basic ancillary documents | The additional documents needed to help put your estate plan into practice. As applicable, your plan includes trust transfer deeds for California real estate, a Certification of Trust, an Assignment of Property, and individualized instructions regarding memorial services and other documents appropriate to your plan. |
| Basic trust funding instructions are the end of the attorney-client experience | A detailed Trust Funding Packet designed to help you actually implement your estate plan. It includes a list of your assets, a list of your professional advisors, detailed trust-funding instructions, and a Digital Asset Worksheet to help you identify and organize the digital property and accounts the people assisting you may someday need to address, together with the other documents and instructions applicable to your plan. |
| Beneficiary designations treated separately from the estate plan | Beneficiary designation review and instructions so retirement accounts, life insurance, annuities, and other beneficiary-designated assets are considered as part of the overall plan. |
| A binder containing the signed documents | Each section includes a Portfolio Insert explaining the documents in that section - what they are, why they are there, and what you and the people who may someday need to use them should know about them. Your estate plan should be something you can understand, not simply something your lawyer understands. |
| Cookie Cutter documents - you name inserted into the blanks | Your name isn't simply inserted into a document. We begin with sophisticated estate planning documents and then customize them to reflect your family, relationships, assets, concerns, values, and the decisions we make together during the planning process. |
| Pets addressed only informally, if at all | Pet planning that can address who should care for your animals, the resources available for their care, and the practical information the person stepping in will need. |
| Generic authority for business interests | Planning for business and professional interests when they are part of your life. We consider who may need authority to manage, preserve, transfer, or wind down those interests during incapacity or after death, and whether specialized trustee authority or an ancillary trustee may be appropriate. |
| Binder delivered. Matter closed. | Beyond the Binder. Multiple layers of post-signing support - from complimentary reminders and a three-year review to trust-funding help, successor-trustee preparation, and our annual Estate Plan Continuity Program. |
We’ve worked with Patricia and her team for several years now and I’m always impressed by their level of detail and streamlined process. They create a customized experience that helped us think through our estate plan from a financial, emotional, and legal perspective. I would highly recommend working with Patricia!
Abby S.
My wife and I enjoyed working with Nadya at DeFonte Law to create our trust. The firm’s approach was very easy for someone with limited legal and financial experience. They helped us thoroughly account for what we needed to protect out assets and family members while still keeping the process focused and timely.
Eric S.
Working with Wendy on my estate planning with De Fonte Law was a real gift. She is kind, compassionate and patient. It took extra time for me due to multiple injuries and setbacks and I found her to be very understanding and encouraging. It is a big relief to have this major undertaking close to completion. Thank you Wendy!
Susanne K.