Estate Planning
When it was founded in 1980, Jay Kaufman’s solo law practice was devoted exclusively to estate planning. Through the years, the practice has expanded to address client needs beyond estate planning. Yet, it is true today as it was thirty years ago: Estate planning remains the foundation of our practice.
What is estate planning? Some like this definition: Estate planning is the process by which individuals plan to leave their assets to whom they want, when they want, in the way they want. While that statement is true, it is incomplete. Estate planning is not just about death.
Clients today still have estate plans to provide for their families. But more and more often, they’re now engaging in estate planning to protect assets for their own use, whether it be pre-retirement, post-retirement or in preparation for a period of incapacity or illness.
Many people think estate planning is only for the wealthy or the elderly. Nothing could be further from the truth. The couple with toddlers, few assets and lots of life insurance needs an estate plan every bit as much the couple in their 50s with $1 million in their retirement plan. The same is true with a single mom with teenage children.
Our estate planning clients include that single mom, young couple, the pre-retirement couple, same-sex couples, seniors, professionals, executives, business owners, and individuals seeking counsel after divorce.
Ongoing training and experience allow us to provide sensible estate planning solutions. We have state-of-the-art techniques at our fingertips. Jay Kaufman is one of a few practitioners in the Chicago area who devote one week every year to attending the University of Miami Law School’s Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning. Heckerling Institute is recognized as the largest and most comprehensive estate planning conference in the country. Jay is also an active member of WealthCounsel, a national organization of 1,500 estate planning attorneys.
We believe that estate planning is more than a transaction. Rather, it is a lifetime process. Working with our clients’ other professional advisors, our firm focuses on caring for our clients and their families throughout their lifetimes. Our lifetime planning process is illustrated in this diagram. In so doing, we develop lifelong, multi-generation relationships with our client families.
While we implement well-established estate planning tools and techniques, we do not provide off-the-shelf solutions to our clients. Our experience and our unique approach allows us to take the time to fully understand each client’s exact objectives and customize the estate plan to ensure that each client’s objectives are met completely.
See our Client Help Center for Preparing for Your First Visit, a working list of documents and relevant information you’ll want to bring to your first estate planning visit at our office.
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