A Suze Orman exclusive

When you go to see a lawyer, this is how they should charge you and what they should do for you.

1. Your lawyer should quote you an upfront fee to create all your documents. Do not let them charge you on an hourly basis. This upfront fee should run around $1,500 to $2,500, depending on the complexity of your situation.
2. After the document is created, the lawyer should sit down with you for two to four hours to go over every word of that revocable trust and make sure you understand it.
3. Your lawyer's fee should include the funding of the trust, which is an essential step. This is where the lawyer has the titles to all your assets - bank accounts, real estate, brokerage accounts, etc. - changed from your individual name to the name of the trust. If this isn't done then your trust is not funded, and your assets will be governed by your will and not your trust. In other words, without funding you've got a worthless document. The legal term is empty trust. You can do the funding yourself, but when you are paying a lawyer to create the trust, they should do it for you. The more assets you have that require title changes, the more the lawyer is going to charge.
4. The fee should also cover the creation of a pour-over will. As we discussed earlier, this document will take care of all the assets that are not in trust.
5. Lastly, your trust documents should include the creation of a durable power of attorney for health care, to protect you in case of a life-threatening illness.