Foundational Planning
Your Estate Planning Foundation
What Is Foundational Planning?
Foundational Planning is the essential first step in any estate planning engagement. It establishes a comprehensive legal framework, encompassing both will-based and trust-based strategies, that protects your family and ensures your wishes are honored.
For many people, a foundational plan is created during a major life milestone: welcoming young children, accumulating significant assets, or approaching retirement. While a well-built plan can serve you for years without needing significant changes, life has a way of shifting priorities. As your children grow, your wealth increases, or your goals evolve, your plan should evolve with it.
That’s why Foundational Planning is also the natural starting point for our Dynamic Planning approach. Once your foundation is in place, you can choose to continue with a Dynamic Planning subscription for ongoing reviews and support, or simply return to revisit your plan when life calls for it. Either way, you’ll have the peace of mind that comes from knowing your plan was built right from the start.
Straightforward Protection Through Probate
Will-Based Estate Planning
Will-based planning centers around a comprehensive Last Will and Testament as the primary vehicle for asset distribution.
This approach includes essential documents such as a durable power of attorney, healthcare directives, and your will, which outlines how your assets should be distributed, names guardians for minor children, and designates an executor to carry out your wishes.
While your estate will go through probate, a court-supervised process that validates your will and ensures proper asset distribution, this approach offers simplicity and cost-effectiveness for many families.
Will-based plans work exceptionally well for individuals with straightforward asset structures who want clear legal direction without the complexity of trust management during their lifetime. The probate process, while public and potentially time-consuming, provides court oversight that can be beneficial in certain situations, such as when there may be disputes among beneficiaries or complex creditor issues.
Enhanced Control and Privacy Protection
Trust-Based Estate Planning
Trust-based planning utilizes a revocable living trust as the centerpiece of your estate plan, offering significant advantages over will-only approaches. With a properly funded living trust, your assets avoid the probate process entirely, providing your family with privacy, faster asset distribution, and reduced administrative costs.
You maintain complete control over your assets during your lifetime while serving as your own trustee, and upon incapacity or death, your chosen successor trustee seamlessly steps in to manage and distribute assets according to your detailed instructions.
This approach provides superior incapacity planning, as your successor trustee can immediately access and manage trust assets if you become unable to do so, eliminating the need for costly and time-consuming court-appointed guardianship proceedings.
Trust-based planning also offers greater flexibility in asset distribution, allowing you to specify not just who receives your assets, but how and when they receive them, making it ideal for families with specific concerns about beneficiary financial management or protection needs.
The Team Working for You
Meet Our Partners
Gregory Jacobs
ESTATE PLANNING LAWYER & CEO
Audra D. Lynn
ESTATE PLANNING LAWYER
YOUR QUESTIONS, ANSWERED
Frequently Asked Questions
There are several effective strategies we use at Jacobs Law to help clients avoid probate entirely. The most comprehensive approach we recommend is establishing a revocable living trust, which allows your assets to transfer directly to beneficiaries without court involvement.
We also guide clients in designating beneficiaries on financial accounts (payable-on-death or transfer-on-death accounts), structuring joint ownership with right of survivorship, and utilizing transfer-on-death deeds for real estate.
Our goal is ensuring your assets have clear legal mechanisms for transfer that bypass the probate court system entirely.
A revocable living trust offers several significant advantages over a will alone. In many cases, assets held in a trust can pass to your beneficiaries without going through probate, saving your family time, money, and stress during an already difficult period. However, whether probate is required depends on your specific circumstances, and your attorney can help you understand what to expect.
Trusts also provide complete privacy since they are not public records like wills, and they include built-in incapacity protection. If you become unable to manage your affairs, your successor trustee can step in without court involvement.
Additionally, trusts allow for faster asset distribution and give you more control over how and when beneficiaries receive their inheritance.
Proper foundational planning dramatically reduces the burden on your loved ones, and this is something we prioritize at Jacobs Law.
With our plans, your family won't have to guess your wishes or navigate complex legal processes during their time of grief. The probate avoidance strategies we implement through trusts mean faster access to assets—often within days rather than months or years.
We ensure clear beneficiary designations eliminate confusion, and we help organize all your documents so your family won't be scrambling to locate important information during a difficult time.
Yes, most people benefit from having both documents. Even with a revocable living trust, you still need a "pour-over" will to handle any assets that weren't transferred into the trust and to name guardians for minor children, something trusts cannot do.
The will acts as a safety net for your trust-based plan, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks while still maintaining the probate-avoidance benefits for trust assets.
While creating a trust-based plan typically costs more upfront than a simple will, it's often less expensive in the long run.
A properly funded trust eliminates these costs entirely and provides immediate benefit to your family. For most people with straightforward assets, the peace of mind and family protection justify the initial investment.
Without a trust or proper incapacity planning, your family would need to go to court to have someone appointed as your guardian or conservator. This is a public, expensive, and time-consuming process that strips away your privacy and control.
With a revocable living trust, your chosen successor trustee can immediately manage your affairs according to your wishes, maintaining your dignity and family's privacy while ensuring bills are paid and investments are managed.
Absolutely. Both wills and revocable living trusts can be modified at any time during your lifetime. This flexibility is crucial as your family situation, assets, and wishes evolve over time.
At Jacobs Law Group, we work closely with you to ensure any changes are properly documented and that all related documents remain coordinated and effective. We recommend that families review their foundational plan every few years or after major life events—such as marriages, divorces, births, deaths, or significant changes in financial circumstances—to ensure their plan continues to serve their family's needs.
This is exactly why we started our Dynamic Estate Planning service, so that we can proactively work with you on an ongoing basis to keep your plan current and effective as your life changes.
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