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What's a typical going rate for a decent estate attorney (hourly rate, or lump sum)?
We are in 40s, and have all the right investment and insurance things in place, but we have been super lazy about wills/trusts/estate planning
Our situation is, roughly: 401K = 1M; other investment = 1M; 1 home paid, and rented: 0.6M; second home (living in it) mortgage: 0.7M; level term life with 12 years remaining worth 1.2M; 529: 150K. Other / money market/emergency fund / remodeling fund/whatever: about 50K. Two minor children, no relatives in US, so in case of simultaneous death of both spouses, children will need overseas guardians.
how much should we expect to pay?
In my mind, it depends on what you want to accomplish. Let's say the estate attorney advises you to do the following and you agree:
Set up a simple grantor trust
Set up a QPRT, together with appropriate 3rd party appraisals of your home & the tax forms for the gift
Create wills
Medical power of attorney
You might spend something like $3K to $5K for the above.
That's interesting. But I have reason to suspect that lower cost alternatives to all those things are available.
Way too many times I've come across people charging thousands of dollars or more for the exact same information/services that you can get elsewhere for a much lower cost or even for free if you know where to look.
Part of the issue is that you won't know if the documents created by the low-cost person will hold up until decades from now when you die. This is also true of the expensive estate attorney, but the more seasoned and older estate attorneys, because they are, well, old, will have had some clients die & the documents they prepared decades ago will have been tested. You don't want to be the very first client for a newly minted estate attorney who just hung his shingle.
In my mind, it depends on what you want to accomplish. Let's say the estate attorney advises you to do the following and you agree:
Set up a simple grantor trust
Set up a QPRT, together with appropriate 3rd party appraisals of your home & the tax forms for the gift
Create wills
Medical power of attorney
You might spend something like $3K to $5K for the above.
Just out of curiosity, and this may be getting a bit far afield from the initial question, but why would you think a QPRT would be recommended in their situation? Also, by a "simple grantor trust", do you mean an RLT?
Again, just curious about your thoughts. To the extent it may be helpful to readers of the thread, feel free to elaborate. Not a big deal. I'm just thinking that, A) at ~4.7M total net worth they don't have federal estate tax exposure and appear unlikely to anytime soon, so leveraging the gift for federal purposes doesn't appear necessary and B) unless they're in a state with both estate AND gift taxation they could always just gift the home outright to one or more kids in the future if they want to "downsize" with no adverse impacts.
Just my two cents, and I freely admit to missing something.
Just out of curiosity, and this may be getting a bit far afield from the initial question, but why would you think a QPRT would be recommended in their situation? Also, by a "simple grantor trust", do you mean an RLT?
Again, just curious about your thoughts. To the extent it may be helpful to readers of the thread, feel free to elaborate. Not a big deal. I'm just thinking that, A) at ~4.7M total net worth they don't have federal estate tax exposure and appear unlikely to anytime soon, so leveraging the gift for federal purposes doesn't appear necessary and B) unless they're in a state with both estate AND gift taxation they could always just gift the home outright to one or more kids in the future if they want to "downsize" with no adverse impacts.
Just my two cents, and I freely admit to missing something.
I'm just making it up. I'm not an estate expert by any means - I just threw that in as an example of something that might apply, and only when warranted, the point being that someone with domain specific expertise needs to be involved. Also, A 4.7M net worth today can easily grow to a big number 30 years from now. No one knows what will happen with estate taxes & gift taxes over the next 30-50 years, but my personal guess is they will not be going down.
I'm just making it up. I'm not an estate expert by any means - I just threw that in as an example of something that might apply, and only when warranted, the point being that someone with domain specific expertise needs to be involved. Also, A 4.7M net worth today can easily grow to a big number 30 years from now. No one knows what will happen with estate taxes & gift taxes over the next 30-50 years, but my personal guess is they will not be going down.
No probs, just wondering. Right now the estate tax exemption is 5.34 per person and adjusted upward for inflation, so the chances of it impacting the individuals noted is probably not that great, but yeah, possible, and who knows what the future will bring in the arena. And totally agree that if one has 7 figure net worth, paying a few grand to an estate planning attorney who knows what they're about is a very worthwhile investment.
What's a typical going rate for a decent estate attorney (hourly rate, or lump sum)?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mathjak107
We are in new york city so a one hour consultation was 525.00 and the documents and trusts we needed were 4500.00
Quote:
Originally Posted by SportyandMisty
You might spend something like $3K to $5K for the above.
It also depends on where you live, if you're single, married, have kids, etc etc etc.
I paid less than 1K in SoCal.
I paid way more than that for my pre-paid cremation, LOL
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