What Does My Lawyer Need to Know?

Before I meet with clients, I send them questionnaire so they can gather information that will help us both be more productive in our meeting. In general, clients bring this paper work back in one of three ways:

1. Completely filled out with attachments and tabs,

2. Partially filled out (meaning they put their name on it in the car in the parking lot, and then the pen ran out of ink)

3. Still folded up and in the sealed envelope in which I mailed it to them.

Any of these is ok, really. I sometimes arrive for meetings with my own advisors with everything perfectly in order, and sometimes I arrive with sealed envelopes and the same sheepish look my clients have, like the student that didn’t do their homework.  The important thing is that I, and my clients, show up.

In case you are the type to never unseal the envelope and are wondering what your lawyer needs to know and why, here it is:

  1. What you own, how you own it, who you own it with and what you want done with it when you die.  This will help the lawyer know if you have tax issues, how your property will pass with and without a will, and help you figure out if you might have issues around paying for long term care, providing for other family members, etc.
  2. Whether your children have any kind of special needs or issues with alcohol, drugs or gambling. For children (minor or adult) with special needs, often a direct inheritance can jeopardize vital public benefits they may be receiving. For children with addiction problems, direct inheritances could be life-threatening. Talk to your attorney about how to protect your adult children in these cases.
  3. Whether you have talked to the people you are going to name in various roles, and whether they have accepted.  I had a colleague tell me about when she mailed some paperwork to her client’s adult child explaining the “job” her mother had given her as health care agent. The daughter sent the papers back to the attorney with a note that she did not want this role and did not accept it. Thankfully, this was discovered before an actual medical emergency and the client could make alternate plans, but it’s always better to talk to people ahead of time.
  4. Whether you’ve talked to your family about your health care wishes. It’s important to get the legal documents in place so someone can communicate with your doctor’s about your health care if you are unable. But it’s also just as important that you actually tell these people what you would want done in an emergency. Don’t leave it to them to guess what you might want, or to make the decisions they would want for themselves. And worse, don’t leave 6 family members all of whom are disagreeing and the one person who is in charge has no idea what you would want.  Talk to them early and often.
  5. The legal names, addresses and phone numbers of your important people. Sometimes people put down shortened names on the forms, or leave out middle initials that they tell me about only when 37 pages of legal documents are sitting in front of them waiting to be signed. Be sure to list people’s names the way they should be written on the actual documents. It’s a time saver and a tree saver.

See, it’s not all that bad? The attorney just needs to know certain vital aspects of your life in order to help put the right plan in place for you. Just like your doctor needs the whole story in order to make the correct diagnosis. And you always tell your doctor the whole story, right? Hello?

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