Frequently Asked Questions about
Estate Planning, Wills, Trusts, and Probate

• How do you set your fees?

As a Virginia estate planning and estate and trust administration attorney, I help you deal with the wide range of legal issues that may arise at your death or incapacity, or upon the incapacity or death of your family members.

After I learn about your family, your financial situation, your philosophy, and your estate planning goals, I make recommendations. Once you decide which recommendations to pursue, I will draft appropriate legal documents, discuss them with you, and work with you until we have finished and signed them.

I can and do work closely with other advisors you may have retained, including accountants, financial planners, and insurance agents, in order to meet your needs efficiently. And I do understand my clients’ concerns about fees – especially for estate-planning work that possibly could be deferred to another day.

My current hourly rate is $420 per billable hour. However, I generally charge agreed, fixed fees for the work I do on estate planning tasks. I believe that fixed fees encourage clients to consult with me during the planning process and to ask more questions, and lead to better client relations in the long run. Fixed fees are based on my projection of the time I will spend on and the complexity of the complete estate planning project, and are different for each client. I usually can quote them at the conclusion of our initial personal interview.

A married couple with identical estate-planning objectives generally may hire the same attorney, paying only a single fee (which is often the same as, or only slightly more than, I charge to prepare one person’s estate plan).

I am often asked to quote a price for a “simple will.” I can’t do that, because there really is no such thing. Just as no two Virginia families are alike, neither are any two Virginia estate plans, and I would not fulfill my duty as your personal lawyer if I just emailed you a questionnaire and then filled in blanks on some sort of will form without getting to know you and without discussing other aspects of estate planning. For that reason, you are not likely to find me to be the cheapest lawyer in town. However, you almost certainly will find my fees, whether fixed or hourly, to be lower than those of large-firm partners with comparable experience in trust, estate, probate, tax, and business law, and substantially lower than the fees of firms you might hear advertising themselves on the radio.

(As an aside, there are a variety of “will kits” and “lawyer-in-a-box” software programs available in bookstores and by mail order, some of which may be adequate as temporary solutions for young people who cannot afford to hire an estate planning attorney. As of mid-2010, there still are no web-based "legal document services" that I believe are adequate even for young people.)

Business owners, people with complex family situations, and people with substantial assets in retirement plans often will require additional services, sometimes over a substantial period of time, and their estate planning fees can be substantial as well. If you fit into one of those categories, I may quite you a fixed fee for the basic work involved, and agree with you on an "add-on" hourly fee for dealing with special problems.

For Virginia probate and trust work (representing the executor or administrator of an estate or the successor trustee of a living trust), I generally charge either a percentage fee based on the size of the estate or trust. I usually charge my hourly rate (currently $420 per billable hour) for giving advice to individual Virginia executors or trustees who are doing most of the work themselves, for handling Virginia estate and trust litigation, and for filing and prosecuting guardianship and conservatorship applications for incapacitated elders in Virginia circuit courts.

“The minute you read something you can’t understand, you can almost be sure it was drawn up by a lawyer.”  –Will Rogers