Step 1: We Begin With the Right Environment. There are many ways to engage legal services. We believe the environment in which the conversations play out is almost as important as the legal skills required to execute. We offer a discrete office, tastefully appointed with total confidentiality. Our model is one of results and progress rather than hourly meetings; families leave our office with greater clarity. They know they can walk in the door in good times and bad and resolve their issues. Step 2: Our Mutual Introduction Meeting.Our Mutual Introduction Meeting is an opportunity for you to meet with Kevin Hernandez, Esq., so both of you can determine whether there is a good fit between you and our firm. Our philosophy believes every family is unique and, therefore, worthy of the utmost personal attention. During our Mutual Introduction Meeting we take the time to develop a thorough understanding of your circumstances. We give you a chance to teach us about your family. We want to learn what is most important to you, as well as what you believe may be impediments to realizing you’re planning goals. We explain what may happen to your assets and family under your current plan if you became mentally incapacitated or died. We provide information about our firm and answer your questions. Finally, we explain our fixed fee philosophy. If it looks like there is a good fit, you will select the plan and fee, and we will prepare a written Service Agreement. If you and your spouse, or significant other, will be involved in the planning,both of you must be present at ALL meetings, including our Mutual Introduction Meeting. Step 3: Family Wealth Inventory and Goal Clarifier.If you hire us to assist you, we will give you our Family Wealth Inventory and our Goal Clarifier to complete at home before your next meeting. The Family Wealth Inventory asks for your asset information. If you have a financial advisor, he or she can help you put together the necessary information. Our Goal Clarifier helps you clarify or identify your goals and objectives. While we believe that understanding the facts is indispensable to good planning, facts alone remain void of meaning until they are understood in the context of your hopes, fears and dreams. It is important to your success and your family’s beneficial enjoyment of your success, that you gain a clear understanding of your requirements, goals, values and dreams. It’s important that you complete theGoal Clarifier. Step 4: Blueprinting Your Plan Through Our Client Clarity Conversation and Rights and Responsibilities Review. Our Client Clarity Conversation allows us to begin Blueprinting Your Plan. Through conversations we gather information and analyze your situation. Our experience tells us that good questions inevitably lead to good answers. While we ask thoughtful questions, more importantly, we listen … with care. We seek first to understand you and your family. Then we review all your assets; how they’re held and any related tax issues. We seek to understand your tolerance for complexity. We also try to understand the money. How much is there? How much do you or your family need for lifestyle purposes – now and in the future? Who are the intended beneficiaries of your wealth? And, whether there is an interest in philanthropy? As we understand your objectives, planning opportunities emerge. We discuss how the opportunities meet your objectives. We address any risks that may arise and how to manage such risks to your satisfaction. We continue our conversations with our Rights and Responsibilities Review. During this review we explain your role in actively managing and controlling all of your affairs, both legal and financial. We also focus on whom you want to give the responsibility of acting on your behalf to control your investments, health care, and business decisions during your life, your incapacity, and death. We review the legal responsibilities imposed upon trustees, personal representatives, and you’re various financial and healthcare agents. We offer suggestions about the qualities you should look for when filling these offices within your estate plan solution. During this stage we identify estate and wealth preservation strategies for your consideration. Some of these strategies you may not even know exist, such as inheritance protection trusts for your beneficiaries, tax-advantaged trusts, IRA wealth creating trusts, trusts that encourage entrepreneurial wealth creation or financial literacy, and purposeful trusts that bring meaning and significance to your legacy and help create good beneficiaries. At the end of our conversations, together we will have crafted a blueprint to fit your family’s unique situation. Step 5: Constructing Your Solution. Once we have your blueprint, we construct your Family Wealth Solution. Our unique process transforms your concerns and our conversations into an understandable, coordinated solution. We review and explain the elements of your Family Wealth Solution. We use diagrams so you better understand how your Family Wealth Solution works to achieve your goals. Once you thoroughly understand your Family Wealth Solution, you sign your legal tools that implement your Family Wealth Solution. In most law firms, the relationship ends here. But at The Hernandez Law Firm, P.A., we see things differently. The signing of your legal tools that implement your Family Wealth Solution is just the first part of your journey as we build our relationship with you. Next we discuss coordinating your assets with your Family Wealth Solution. Step 6: Funding Your Solution Just signing of your legal tools that implement your Family Wealth Solution will not ensure success. Quite often, clients overlook two of the most important aspects of planning: asset allocation and funding. By failing to properly allocate your assets, to fund your trusts, and to create proper beneficiary designations, your Family Wealth Solution estate plan Is well-drafted, yet ineffective. To fix that we provide you with written funding instructions for you to properly coordinate your assets with your Family Wealth Solution. Sometimes, we will prepare deeds and beneficiary designations. We often work with your financial advisors to make sure your Team of Advisors is in harmony with your Family Wealth Solution. Step 7: Maintaining Your Solution The one thing that is certain is change. Your Family Wealth Solutio nmust be responsive to the ever-changing dynamics of the world. You need to anticipate and accommodate change through prudent monitoring and flexibility.We make it easy for you through OurLegacy Circle™ Client Care Program.If you’re family or financial condition changes, prompting changes to your plan, OurLegacy Circle™ Client Care Program helps you keep your plan current. As part of OurLegacy Circle™ Client Care Program, our LegalVault gives you secure internet access to, and control of, your legal tools, especially, your health related tools and information need in an emergency. Optional Steps: Our Family Solutions Retreat Successfully educating family members about wealth transition
Because many of our clients have requested that their children meet with us so we may educate them about their Family Wealth Solution, we offer our Family Wealth Retreat.At our Family Wealth Retreat your family members learn about the roles you expect them to play. We explain the roles and duties of fiduciaries (Trustees, Personal Representatives, Guardians, Agents, etc.) and the role of a good beneficiary. Also, our Family Wealth Retreat provides your children the opportunity to discuss with us how their estate plan should coordinate with yours and what they should tell their own advisors. Optional Steps: Capturing & Passing On Your Non-Financial Wealth Sometimes it’s about values and not just valuables
Every family has certain customs, traditions, stories, history, beliefs, and core values that deserve to be preserved and passed on from generation to generation. Have you thought about the legacy of traditions and wisdom you received from your parents or grandparents? What important messages would you like to pass on to others? We’d be honored to help you capture this non-financial wealth in a way that will be meaningful for your family for decades to come. If you don’t take these steps to preserve what is unique about your family, it’s like a library on fire: all that wisdom, knowledge and information is lost! Let us help you preserve yours today. Getting StartedThrough our Family Wealth Solutions Process we transform your concerns into an understandable, coordinated plan. I hope you’ll take the next step and meet with us. We always make time to sit down with folks who want to learn more about what we do. We can help, so call us at 727-712-1710. We look forward to meeting you! Kevin |