Step Two: Review and Signing Meeting
After the drafting is done, we meet to review your documents, to check for accuracy, make changes, and answer questions which may have arisen since our first meeting. We cover the custom portions of your planning documents.
At Wilson Legal, we have invested hours researching and crafting our own language for our documents. We create our own standard. This means we have taken what comes with the software we use and state forms and we have elevated the language to better serve you. You will find that we also make changes as a result of our clients’ experiences making our documents updated to improve your experience at a level above the basic changes to case law and statutes.
During our review meeting, we talk about how each part of each document works and why we include the language we include; however, we do not read each paragraph to our clients at the review meeting. To do so typically puts the client to sleep and does little good for anyone. We review the function of each document as a whole and the people appointed to carry out any function or receive any benefit. Then we ask the client if they are comfortable signing. You may separate the review and the signing meetings. But we will not send you home with drafts of your documents until after the review meeting is complete.
Then we ask the client if they have any questions and remind them that they can write on the drafts and make a list of any questions which they can email us or bring with them to the signing meeting. The first 30 minutes of the signing meeting is reserved for questions clients may have after reviewing the documents at home. We do not send drafts to clients until after the review meeting because a few clients have become overwhelmed or confused by the documents. We don’t want anyone to experience overwhelm or confusion. That’s why we break down the planning process into little steps or bites. And that’s why we always do a review meeting so that clients understand the sections that contain the specifics about their own family, the function and purpose of each document and where to find the people who will be in charge before they receive drafts to review on their own.
One (1) Week between Review and Signing
We do schedule the Signing Meeting about a week after the Review Meeting. One week may not be long enough to read all of the administrative sections of your will or trust. For busy people, we offer combined Review and Signing Meetings.
We want clients to sign quickly after the review meeting because drafts of documents will not protect you. In 2021, three clients passed away prior to signing their planning documents.
Your planning documents (with a few exceptions) are changeable by you as long as you have capacity. We believe that it’s better to have a good plan protecting you then a perfect plan that can’t protect you at all because it isn’t signed.
Extra 60 Days to Review
We include extra time to review all the details of any document for every client. We give each client 60 days from the day we deliver their planning package to them to review all the administrative sections or “boring stuff” and to schedule a date with one of our attorneys to answer or dig deeper into any word, topic, section or paragraph they have a question about and we make changes during that 60 day period at no additional charge.
The Signing Meeting:
After the client has reviewed the documents, we sign them. We spend the first 30 minutes of the Signing Meeting reviewing any questions the clients have. Two people from our witness team come to the office to witness the signing after the first half hour. We sign the documents and answer any follow up questions the clients have. The Funding and Delivery Meeting is next and we confirm the date and time for that appointment before the client leaves.