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Legal Fees

At Keyser Mason Ball LLP we want to bring our experience and expertise to bear on your estate concerns. But we also understand the importance of providing our clients with cost effective legal services that provide our clients with affordable solutions. After all, we pay bills too.

Our fees will vary according to the complexity of your estate issues; the time we spend consulting with you (which would include meetings, telephone discussions and emails with us or other lawyers in our firm); drafting the documents required for your estate plan; reviewing and executing all documentation with you; and reporting on our work on your behalf.

You can help reduce the time we spend by filling out our Estate Questionnaire and sending it to us via email to review before our initial meeting.

For fairly straightforward situations, we estimate that the initial meeting will be around 1.5 hours. If matters are relatively straightforward and we receive instructions to proceed, we will then prepare the documents. We will meet with you again, usually within two to three weeks, for approximately an hour, to thoroughly review and execute all the prepared documents.

We generally find that our fees for wills and powers of attorney are rarely below $1,500.00 and usually fall within the $2,000 to $3,000 range (not including applicable taxes and disbursements).

Often our clients will have estate issues that require more specialized attention and time, possibly involving other professionals at our firm, or elsewhere. Examples might be situations involving business succession planning, multiple wills, assets in foreign jurisdictions, family cottages, specialized trusts, unusual family circumstances and so on. This additional work will be reflected in a higher fee.

Usually, we can give you a good estimate about how complex your estate plan will be during our first meeting. If circumstances or information comes to light that requires an adjusting of our estimate we will let you know as soon as possible.

If you have an initial meeting with us but do not follow up so that we can finish our work on your behalf, we will bill you for the time spent on your matter, including any drafting or correspondence.

We typically render our account when you meet us to sign your will and we request that it is paid in full at that time. We accept all major credit cards, with the exception of American Express. If your estate plan requires extensive work, such as a complex business reorganization in combination with a succession plan, family trusts, and related matters we will require a retainer early in the process. We will bill our work against the retainer as we proceed and may require you to replenish the retainer amount as we go.

If you would like to know more about this or other issues in estate planning, please visit the other information links for our Estate and Business Succession Services Group. Or call us and make an appointment with one of our lawyers in this Group. We look forward to hearing from you.

Contact:

Daniel C. Barichello dbarichello@kmblaw.com

Suzanna Winsborough swinsborough@kmblaw.com