The Estate Planning Team at
Schultz & Associates Law Center, P.C.
Eugene, Oregon

At Schultz & Associates Law Center, P.C., we work closely with other professional advisors, including Certified Financial Planner™ Practitioners, investment advisors, financial consultants, insurance professionals, Certified Public Accountants, and tax advisors as part of the estate planning team. We believe the team approach provides our mutual clients with the most comprehensive, realistic and effective estate plan.

The Process

• Step One: The Initial Consultation

  We offer all prospective clients a complimentary initial consultation. With the clients' permission, we encourage you to attend this initial consultation as well. If this cannot be arranged, we will seek the clients' permission to discuss their estate planning with you afterward.

  During this first meeting, Scott will spend approximately an hour with your clients. After listening to your clients' needs, plans and goals, he will generally make some estate planning recommendations. If the situation is complex, he may ask for a follow-up meeting to present a summary and specific recommendations.

• Step Two: The Design Meeting

  Should your clients choose to engage our firm at this point, a design meeting to begin implementation of the plan will be scheduled ... normally within a week to ten days. This meeting may be quite lengthy as Scott will thoroughly explain the planning documents to your clients, and to their family members if necessary.

• Step Three: The Delivery Meeting

  Clients should plan on spending about two hours with Scott as it is necessary to explain each document that your clients are signing. He also will explain the trust funding process, which will be scheduled with our Funding Coordinator.

• Step Four: The Funding Meeting

  In order for a trust to meet estate-planning goals and to avoid probate of assets, it is critical that assets be titled in the name of the trust. The process of transferring assets into a trust is called "Trust Funding", and consists of changing beneficiary designations and transferring the ownership of assets into the name of the trust. The role of our funding coordinator, Lynn Kief, is to prepare the required documents and forms to facilitate the changes. Typically your client will meet with her approximately 2-4 weeks after the Delivery Meeting and in most cases funding of the trust is completed and verified in as little as 8-12 weeks.

• Step Five: Follow-Up

  We have an extensive follow-up system, which we believe helps build stronger client relationships. With membership in our annual updating program, known as "LifePlan® Legal Services", we provide the most up-to-date information in estate planning and a continued subscription to our estate planning newsletter. Through the newsletter we attempt to keep our clients informed of changes that could affect their planning, and to help them maintain an awareness of their estate planning goals. In this manner we hope to ensure that our clients' plans are never out-of-date with their current needs and goals.

  In addition to meeting annually with our clients, we also offer quarterly seminars and workshops on a variety of subjects to further educate out clients changing needs.

Resources

Joint Marketing

• Client Education
  Please visit our Newsletter Archive for an online library of articles on issues related to estate planning. We have posted a number of articles suitable for use as hand-outs to your clients.
• Joint Marketing
  We are happy to work with you to speak to your clients or prospects on estate planning issues, including basic estate planning, charitable giving strategies, generation-skipping and other advanced topics, business succession, or asset protection. Please call the office if you would like to plan a workshop or a "Client Appreciation Event."
• Monthly Estate Planning E-Newsletter
  Each month we produce an electronic newsletter, on estate planning issues, for professional advisors like yourself. You may subscribe online and we will add you to our monthly e-mail list.