My wife and I have engaged a law firm in Houston to help draw up a will and potentially set up a trust. The Consultation is "free", but their standard cost for a will is $3500. That seems high - can anybody confirm, and are their any Aggies in Estate Planning that I should work with on this?

I'm in Dallas but got my will & trust done last year for $1500

I got my will and all my health docs for <$1500. I also worked as an FA for years and IMO trusts are not necessary unless you are really rich or have complicated heir issues. Ask your attorney what the benefits are before saying yes.

I was quoted $3100 in Dallas.

Live in the hill country and spent $2500 a few years ago. A friend had theirs done at same law firm recently and was up to $3000.

Anyone in Austin that will do a comprehensive estate planning/Wil?

Anyone rough cost estimate for someone with a good amount of asset, business ownership, Real Estate?

Haha

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IMO trusts are not necessary unless you are really rich or have complicated heir issues. .

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As a former FA, what would be your minimum of someone who was really rich? tia

Paid $4k with spouse, no kids. Included will, medical power of attorney, power of attorney, and maybe one or two other standard docs. But our bill was higher than normal since we read everything and had to have a bunch of stuff explained, and then we wanted to change the language on some parts. Attorney was surprised that we sent back a marked-up copy with all our comments and questions and were asking what-if questions. Charged us for a few extra hours to run through it all, which was to be expected. Also had to plan for the future care of a parent. But we wrote them so that we may not ever have to change them again.

That does not seem unreasonable.

Assuming an hourly rate of $300 for your lawyer and say, $75 for the paralegal, at least an hour long consultation, an hour long execution ceremony, assorted email/phone communication for information confirmation/providing documents they need, a few hours drafting and fine tuning it for your case specific needs, draft review, revisions...

That will be about 12 hours of an attorney's time. Which does not seem too crazy when you are asking him to learn about your entire life and make contingency plans specifically for your wishes once you are no longer able to speak for yourself.

OldArmyCT said:

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I got my will and all my health docs for <$1500. I also worked as an FA for years and IMO trusts are not necessary unless you are really rich or have complicated heir issues. Ask your attorney what the benefits are before saying yes.

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There are far more trusts than should ever have been formed, that is for sure.

As to the price quote question of the OP, some lawyers will bill as if they drafted all your documents from scratch, while most of what is generated is from the same template as the person before you, with a tweak here and a tweak there. If you have unusual circumstances or a lot of questions or want to go over the documents in detail, it will, of course, cost more.