Lancaster PA Estates, Wills and Trusts, Guardianship
Serving clients in York, Chester, Dauphin, and surrounding counties.
Estate Planning
Our Process
Every person over the age of 18 should have estate planning documents in place, regardless of the size of your estate. Our estate planning team will meet with you to discuss your individual situation and determine what documents would help you achieve your intent. We then prepare a fee agreement, and if you move forward with our office, we prepare draft documents for your review.
We work together with our clients to edit the document and answer questions. We then finalize the process with a signing appointment where we provide the witnesses and notary, either in person or electronically.
Estate planning allows you to be proactive in protecting your loved ones and distributing their assets. We have experience in preparing a Last Will and Testament, Power of Attorney, Health Care Power of Attorney/Advanced Directive, Special Needs Trust, Cabin Trust, Living Revocable Trust. We also remind clients to revisit their estate planning at least every five years, as life changes can require modifications to your estate planning. A birth, death, move to a different state, marriage, divorce, adoption, estrangement, or change in the law are all reasons to schedule a consultation to discuss whether your estate planning needs to be revised.
Preparing for your appointment
Ask our team to provide you with an estate planning intake sheet when you schedule your appointment. Bring your existing estate planning documents to your meeting, if you have earlier documents in place. During our meeting, we will ask a myriad of questions to help us learn about your needs. Do you have a special needs family member? We can prepare trust documents. Do you need a limited power of attorney? We can prepare these documents tailored to meet your individual needs.
Estate Administration
Our process
When a loved one dies, there are often many issues that arise and need a resolution. Paralegal Schimp can assist you in administering an estate when someone close to you has died. Whether your loved one had signed a Last Will and Testament before they died (“testate”) or without a will (“intestate”), we can assist you with administering their estate. We routinely assist clients to administer estates, including probate, filing of Pennsylvania inheritance tax, advertising and the numerous notices and administrative requirements, and preparing family settlement agreements and first and final accountings. We also assist clients with non-probate issues.
Preparing for your appointment
When scheduling a consult, be sure to provide your email address so we can provide you with our estate administration intake form to help make our first meeting as productive as possible. Please bring the original Last Will and Testament or Trust, the death certificate of the person who has died (“decedent”), and the invoice for burial/funeral arrangements. Once we assess the situation and determine what your needs are, we can prepare a fee agreement for our office to assist you with administering an estate or resolving issues.
Guardianship
Our process
When you have a family member or friend that is close to you and they become disabled, incapacitated and needs your help with managing their affairs but a Power of Attorney is not in place, we assist our clients in filing to establish guardianship, and assist guardians after they have been appointed to comply with the rules regarding guardianship and the Guardianship Tracking System. We help our clients to transfer venue of an existing guardianship or petition to appoint a successor guardian where necessary.
Preparing for your appointment
When you schedule your guardianship consultation, we will provide you with our guardianship intake worksheet so you can understand the questions we will ask during our meeting. Guardianship matters involve both a determination of whether a person is incapacitated and needs a guardian, and also whether the proposed guardian is appropriate and deemed acceptable by the Court.
If you need the help of an experienced guardianship, estates, wills & trusts attorney, contact our Lancaster PA office today at (717) 696-6329 for a consultation.
Or, fill in our Contact us form to schedule your consultation.
