Personal & Family Protection Plan Documents

Your Personal & Family Protection Plan includes three legal documents that every responsible Pennsylvania adult should have:

1. Healthcare Power of Attorney
2. Durable Financial Power of Attorney &
3. Last Will & Testament

RFE LAW has made the process of obtaining your essential planning documents both easy and affordable. 

How Easy?

1. Click one of the Start Here buttons on this page to sign the firm's engagement agreement and pay the flat document preparation fee online.
2. Complete the questionnaire that will automatically be emailed to within 15 minutes of the time you sign the firm's engagement agreement.
3. On our online Client Portal, review and approve draft versions of your documents that our attorneys will prepare according to your preferences.

Unlike mass market internet companies that sell the same document to all of their customers with "fill in the blanks," your documents will be prepared individually by our lawyers the same way we would prepare them if you scheduled an in-person consultation.  Once you have approved the drafts, you will not have to worry about printing the documents yourself.  The firm will mail hard copies of your documents to you, including an archival backer and envelope for your Last Will & Testament to keep it safe for the rest of your life.

Moreover, you will be establishing a relationship with a law firm whose lawyers practice in Pennsylvania that will get to know you personally and be available to assist you with other legal needs you may have in the future.  If the firm's clients need legal services that are outside our practice areas, we will refer our clients to lawyers who can help them.

How affordable?

1. The firm charges a one-time, transparent flat fee to prepare your documents (see below), and there is no additional charge for shipping your documents to you.
2. Package discounts are available for singles, married couples, and partners who live together.  That's right.  You do not have to be married to get the benefit of a discount.
3. The firm will make updates and revisions to your documents for FREE as long as we continue to do business.  Just let us know what changes you want our lawyers to make, and we will forward your revised documents to you.

What does it cost?

The firm's current document preparation fee schedule is:

If you are still asking yourself whether you need planning documents, consider the following questions and answers:

"Why do I need a Healthcare Power of Attorney?  I am young/healthy and can make my own medical decisions."

1. This document only comes in to play if something unfortunate happens to you, and you are not able to make your own decisions. It does not surrender any of your medical  decision-making power while you are able to make your own medical decisions.
2. If you do not have one, a doctor or hospital may end up making medical decisions for you that you do not want or your family members may have to spend thousands of dollars on legal fees to have a legal guardian appointed by the Court to make medical decisions for you. 
3. A Healthcare Power of Attorney prevents your loved ones from having to guess at what you would want them to do and will give them the power to do it for you.

"Why do I need a Durable Financial Power of Attorney?  I do not want to surrender the right to control my own affairs."

1. You do not surrender any of your rights when you sign a Durable Financial Power of Attorney.  A Durable Financial Power of Attorney merely allows you to delegate your authority to someone you trust to handle your affairs if you are not able to do so if you become permanently disabled and lack the mental capacity to make decisions for yourself. 
2. You can still handle your own affairs for as long as you are willing and able to do so.
3. If you do not have one, your family members may have to spend thousands of dollars on legal fees to have legal guardian appointed by the Court to handle your financial affairs if you become permanently disabled and lack the mental capacity to make decisions for yourself.

"Why do I need a Last Will?  Doesn't everything I have just pass to my kids?" Or, alternatively, "I am married so doesn't everything just pass to my spouse?"

1. Your Last Will is  your opportunity to tell your loved ones your Last Wishes and ensure that they are fulfilled.  Don't place the burden on your loved ones, who will already be suffering, to stress about whether you would agree with what they might decide to do.
2. In Pennsylvania, if you die without a Last Will, everything you own does not just pass to your kids or to your spouse if you are married. In Pennsylvania, a surviving spouse only receives the first $30,000.00 cash value of your individual assets.  The remainder is then split 50% to your surviving spouse and the other 50% is split equally between all of your children. This can mean that real estate you own might have to be sold to distribute its value between your surviving spouse and/or your children.
3. You can use your Last Will to protect your child's inheritance in a trust to keep them from spending it all at once or to keep your child's inheritance from being taken by your son/daughter-in-law in the event of a divorce. 
4. (This one is important enough to require a 4th reason).  If something catastrophically terrible happens (such as a plane crash to/from a family vacation), and (i) your spouse and kids all die at the same time as you, and (ii) you do not have any other surviving family members, all of your property could end up going to the Pennsylvania Treasury. Nobody wants that to happen. As planning lawyers, we have to imagine and consider the absolute worst scenarios and do what we can to try to prevent them.  A Last Will can help prevent anything like this from happening.
   

Where is the fine print?

There isn't any except that the you have to be a Pennsylvania resident for the firm to prepare documents for you and the firm's Basic Last Wills only include trust provisions for minor children or spendthrifts, which is a polite legal term to describe any of your loved ones who cannot be trusted to responsibly handle money.  If you want to include a Special Needs Trust, GRAT, SLAT, or any other complicated trust or asset preservation strategy into your Last Will, please contact the firm to schedule a free initial consultation with one of our lawyers in person, by phone, or by Zoom to discuss Advanced Estate Planning & Asset Preservation.