Now that we have a baby, my wife and I have been talking about making wills and doing whatever other stuff responsible parents do to ensure that everything goes well after their deaths.
Our child’s daycare is having a charity auction. A small law firm that appears to be well-respected in the area of estate planning has donated a “complete estate plan” for the auction. The minimum bid is $750, and the value is listed as $1,500.
Now, IAAL, but IANA-Trusts-and-Estates-L. I understand that the costs of an “estate plan” likely vary widely, depending on the complexity of the circumstances. I don’t think ours are very complex. But before we go throwing down a four-figure bid on this item, I wanted to check to see if anyone can estimate what a reasonable range of fair market prices would be for this service.
We’re in your neck of the woods and here in Montgomery county it cost us $1200 for our planning. $1500 isn’t too much more as we did ours in Germantown.
I’d say that that $1,200.00 to $1,500.00 for two people is about right. As long as you are not doing anything really funky and complicated. If its just wills, it might cost a bit less.
I’m curious. Just what exactly does this estate planning include? It must be a lot more than wills and such. My husband and I did wills, powers of attorney and PoA for health care a couple of years ago. They were basic, but included appointing guardians for our kids, and setting up simple instructions about the finances. All for about $175.00.
It’s not clear – the auction description merely states that it is a “complete family estate plan.” Based on this page on the website for the law firm that is donating the service, it looks like it would likely include wills, durable powers of attorney, living wills, and trusts.
I think my dad’s cost $800 (Chicago area). That includes who gets what and who has what duties with regard to health care decisions and financial issues, before and after his death.
We paid, IIRC, about 1600 dollars 8 or so years ago; this was in Fairfax County VA. It included trust documents for both kids (a “special needs” trust for Dweezil, a more standard for Sonia), durable power of attorney, medical directives (I think), and of course wills. We cold have paid a few hundred more for revocable living trust documents and will do so at some point (can help reduce estate taxes in some situations, also makes probate easier). There would be additional costs if we did that, as we’d transfer ownership of the house to the living trust and I’m sure there are some fees for that.