Often after presentations, attendees exclaim to me their surprise at my passion for the subject of estate planning. They say, “Wow, Matt. You really love talking about wills and trusts and powers of attorney!” Yeah, I do. I love talking about it and doing it. My clients and I share a really good feeling after the documents are signed. Usually, that’s in my office. Sometimes it’s in other places. I did an estate plan in an ICU once. The nurse that was managing the patient’s (my new client) care was awesome. The family would share with me later the tremendous peace of mind their mom had after I had served her. What an honor for me to help.

Really, if you’re considering doing your estate plan, one reason you might be putting it off is its complexity and all the contingencies you feel you must consider. If you’ve been reading my blogs or know me, you know that I consider myself more an estate planning teacher than simply an estate planning attorney. You deserve to understand the choices you can make and the ramifications. Check out the testimonials on this site and see what people just like you have said about our process.

So, day in day out, no big deals, then suddenly, life happens. What my latest video focuses on is one of the catalysts to estate planning. The moving factors often are marriage, birth, travel, death, taxes and health. Let’s focus on health. So many people are diagnosed every day with serious health issues. If you or someone you know has had this happen, the last thing they want or need to worry about is their estate plan, yet it weighs on them heavily. They want to get this done. Help them get with a good estate planning attorney who knows how to answer their questions and walk and talk them through the documents they need to cover incapacity and death. Help them get this item checked off their bucket list. If you’re a doctor, nurse, therapist, pharmacist or other health professional, be ready with a good referral for all those patients you serve. They need that prescription, too.

I’m teaching estate planning at St. Mary’s Law School and I have the best students.  Most are in their last semester, and although ready to graduate and receive that doctorate degree in jurisprudence, they are worried about that bar exam.  The hundreds of thousands of dollars the degree costs won’t allow them to practice law. Only the license from the state bar will, and they have to pass that test.

I told them I teach estate planning every day to clients and do presentations all the time.  I had to admit that I am so excited to be back in law school, much more so than the first time!

You know, law school wasn’t much fun.  I went at it pretty intensely.  I started at Baylor Law in May of ’90 and finished in July of ’92, 26 months later.  Although it’s usually a three year matriculation and a few months studying for the bar, I took my last final in July followed by a few days break, and then took the three-day bar exam.  I graduated the next day, August 1.

But in law school, I also thought they were hiding the ball.  It’s like they put your face right up next to the big picture, so close that you could only see one tiny bit of it, and only at the end did you back up and see what the picture looked like as whole.  It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the picture to go by!

I promised my students I’m not going to do that.  I said we’d look at the big picture first, and then pull in close for the detail.  I do love to teach.  I love the dialogue.  Learning is exciting.  One of the reasons I love what the Lord has given me to do; I learn something new every day.