Arbor Estate Planning

Estate Planning Attorney in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Creating an estate plan often starts with a simple goal: making life easier for the people you care about. You may want to avoid unnecessary probate, make sure someone can manage your affairs if you become incapacitated, provide for children or grandchildren, or leave clear instructions so your family is not left guessing during a difficult time.

Arbor Estate Planning helps individuals and families prepare for those situations through personalized estate planning. Led by attorney Christopher Juillet, the practice focuses on helping clients build estate plans that not only reflect their wishes but are also properly implemented and reviewed as life changes over time.

What Should a Complete Estate Plan Include?

Estate planning is about more than deciding who receives your property. A well-designed plan also addresses who can make financial and medical decisions if you become unable to act, who will care for minor children, and how your wishes will be carried out both during your lifetime and after your death.

Arbor Estate Planning works with clients to prepare wills, revocable living trusts, durable powers of attorney, advance healthcare directives, and other planning documents tailored to each family's circumstances. The planning process begins with understanding the client's family, assets, and long-term goals before recommending legal tools that fit those needs.

What Happens After Your Trust Is Signed?

Creating a trust is only one part of the estate planning process. If assets are never transferred into the trust or beneficiary designations are not coordinated, the trust may not accomplish everything it was intended to do.

One of Arbor Estate Planning's distinguishing characteristics is its emphasis on trust funding. The firm helps clients understand how bank accounts, investment accounts, real estate, business interests, retirement accounts, and life insurance may need to be coordinated with an estate plan so that the planning documents work as intended. The firm's resources also encourage clients to review and update their plans as families, assets, and laws change over time.

Who Can Make Decisions If You Cannot?

A serious illness or unexpected accident can leave someone temporarily or permanently unable to manage financial or healthcare decisions.

Arbor Estate Planning helps clients prepare for those situations by creating durable financial powers of attorney, medical powers of attorney, advance healthcare directives, and related planning documents that allow trusted individuals to act when needed. For business owners, the firm also prepares business powers of attorney to help ensure important business decisions can continue during periods of incapacity.

How Can You Protect the People Who Depend on You?

Every family has different concerns. Parents may be choosing guardians for young children. Grandparents may want to help pay for a grandchild's education. Families caring for a loved one with disabilities often want to provide financial support while preserving eligibility for important public benefits.

Arbor Estate Planning prepares a variety of specialized trusts and planning arrangements designed to address these situations, including special needs trusts, education trusts, charitable planning options, and other estate planning tools that reflect each family's unique goals.

Planning for Blended Families and Changing Relationships

Second marriages, blended families, and changing financial circumstances often require more careful planning than a simple will alone.

The firm's planning resources discuss coordinating estate plans with prenuptial agreements, balancing the interests of a surviving spouse and children from a previous relationship, and reviewing beneficiary designations and trust provisions as family circumstances evolve. By revisiting an estate plan after major life events, families can reduce the likelihood of unintended consequences later.

What Happens to Your Business If Something Happens to You?

For business owners, estate planning often extends beyond personal assets. Someone may need legal authority to continue operating the business, sign contracts, pay employees, or manage day-to-day decisions if the owner becomes incapacitated.

Arbor Estate Planning assists business owners with business succession planning and business powers of attorney that can help provide continuity while ownership and management transitions are addressed.

Reviewing an Estate Plan Before It Becomes Outdated

An estate plan that reflected your wishes ten or twenty years ago may no longer match your family, finances, or goals today. Marriage, divorce, births, deaths, retirement, new property, or significant financial changes can all affect whether an existing plan continues to meet your needs.

The firm's website encourages clients to periodically review their estate plans rather than assuming previously signed documents will always remain appropriate. Regular reviews help ensure beneficiary designations, fiduciary appointments, trusts, and other planning documents continue to reflect current circumstances.

An Ann Arbor Practice Focused on Long-Term Planning

Throughout its educational resources, Arbor Estate Planning presents estate planning as an ongoing process rather than a one-time event. The firm's materials consistently emphasize understanding a family's goals, implementing planning correctly, coordinating assets with the overall plan, and revisiting important decisions as life changes.

Based in Ann Arbor, the firm also offers telephone and virtual consultations, along with home, hospital, and extended-care-facility visits when appropriate, making estate planning accessible for clients in a variety of circumstances.

Practice Areas

• Estate Planning

• Wills

• Revocable Living Trusts

• Trust Funding

• Durable Financial Powers of Attorney

• Medical Powers of Attorney

• Advance Healthcare Directives

• Business Powers of Attorney

• Business Succession Planning

• Special Needs Trusts

• Education Trusts

• Charitable Planning

• Estate Tax Planning

• Guardian & Conservator Nominations

• Funeral Representative Designations

• Estate Plan Reviews