How to Get Started

By now you’ve seen that Scott Shoemaker and Associates is something special and because you love your family, you know your family deserves the kind of protection, guidance and love we provide for a lifetime. It’s important that you know how we work because we do things a bit differently at Scott Shoemaker and Associates than at other law firms. That’s why our clients love us so much.

We begin with a Family Wealth Planning Session, during which we guide you to get your assets and resources organized so you can finally relax around what you have and what you need.

Then, we look at how to make things as easy as possible for your loved ones after you are gone. Because no one wants to leave a mess for the ones they love.

During your Family Wealth Planning Session, we will identify the best ways for you to ensure your legacy of love and financial security for your family.

Schedule Your Personal Family Wealth Planning Session

Call our office at (319) 804-8346 to schedule your personal Family Wealth Planning Session. We will schedule the most convenient appointment time available for you with one of our expertly trained Personal Family Lawyers. We typically see new clients on Thursdays and Fridays {and we even have evening or weekend appointments available} to make planning as convenient for you as possible.

When you schedule your personal Family Wealth Planning Session, we block 2 hours on our calendar so we can focus entirely on you and your family during this time. We will send you a package of information to complete before our time together, which will help you begin the process of getting your legal and financial life in order. During our meeting together, we will guide you to gently look at what would happen for your loved ones and with your assets if something were to happen to you. And then, we’ll look at what you want to happen and help you create a roadmap to get that plan in place as easily as possible. Clients routinely say “wow, if we had known how easy this would be, we would have done it years ago!” after meeting with us.

Our Family Wealth Planning Session is $750 and if we create a comprehensive plan for you, that planning fee is applied to your legal fees for your lifetime estate plan. In some circumstances, we will waive the planning session fee and instead you can secure your appointment time with a credit card number.

In such cases, so long as you keep your appointment, nothing will be charged on your card unless you decide to proceed with a comprehensive estate plan after the Family Wealth Planning Session. In such a situation, if you must cancel within 1 week of your appointment, your credit card will still not be charged unless you fail to reschedule your appointment within 30 days of your cancellation. If you cannot keep your appointment and you choose not to reschedule, your credit card would be charged the $750 planning fee.

We understand that this policy of securing your appointment with a credit card may seem unique. So is our law firm. We provide our very best service to those families who want to ensure they have trusted counsel to be there for their family when they cannot be.

We focus most our energy providing service to our existing clients and limit the number of new clients we see each week. We only take referrals from trusted Professional Planning Partners. As a result, we must secure your appointment time so that if something comes up and you can’t attend your appointment, we will have enough advance notice to open the slot to a waiting family.

What to Do Prior to Your Personal Family Wealth Planning Session

About 3 days after scheduling your appointment, you will receive a Mailer with your Family Wealth Inventory & Assessment and other important information that you will want to review prior to your personal Family Wealth Planning Session. We must have your Family Wealth Inventory & Assessment returned to our office 3 days prior to your Session either by mail, fax or electronic mail or we will need to reschedule your Session. Feel free to call the office at any time if you need assistance completing your worksheet or have any questions at all.

If you have existing estate planning documents, please make sure that we have your existing documents in our office at least a week before your meeting so that we can review them prior to meeting with you.

What to Expect the Day of Your Personal Family Wealth Planning Session
On the day of your meeting, please expect to spend up to 2 hours with your attorney. The initial meeting with your attorney has two purposes:

To guide you to become more financially organized and clear than you ever have been before, so you can finally relax around what you have and what you need.

Give you clarity on how to make things as easy as possible for your loved ones after you are gone. Because no one wants to leave a mess for the ones they love.

By looking at what would happen under your current plan (or the State’s plan for you if you do not have a plan), you can identify what you would want to happen differently and then together with your Personal Family Lawyer’s guidance make the decisions that are necessary to give you the peace of mind of knowing your family would be taken care of in the way you want if something happened to you.

In the event that your Family Wealth Planning Session reveals specific ways you would want things to happen that are different than what would happen under your current plan or the State’s plan for you, you and your Personal Family Lawyer will design a plan to ensure everything goes as you choose.