Welcome to the Collinson Law Office

Whether you are starting a young family, planning for retirement or anywhere in between, you should have some form of lifetime planning in place. Most people think of estate planning as simply Wills, late-in-life issues or leaving a legacy. But this is only a small part of what lifetime and estate planning provides.

If you have been thinking about some type of planning for a long time or have just recently become interested, Collinson Law can answer your questions and help explain the benefits that lifetime and estate planning have to offer. The goal of the Collinson Law Office is to provide you with reliable legal advice, tailored to your unique needs and wishes.

At the Collinson Law Office, we offer a variety of legal services in the areas of lifetime and estate planning. Each of our services are tailored to your needs and wishes. Attorney Collinson will meet with you for a no obligation, one-on-one consultation, at our office in Hopkinton or at your home, to discuss what services would best serve those needs and wishes. We will form a plan together, that incorporates the most appropriate legal advice on how to achieve your goals.

Our office provides a “flat fee” agreement policy, where you know what the fee will be before making any commitment. Your fee will be set based on your goals and the amount of work involved to achieve them. Our fees are typically significantly less that those of other practices. There are no hourly fees adding on as we work together, which we believe allows for a more thorough collaboration between clients and the attorney. This allows you to freely ask as many questions as necessary to become comfortable that you understand your decisions.

Clients who have completed their lifetime and estate planning through our office are offered the opportunity to become Annual Advising Clients, for a very modest fee. This provides counseling services throughout the year, where clients may ask questions and seek advice on planning issues that may arise. Changes in living situations, asset structures, family circumstances or health, as well as simply having questions about financial or other decisions are welcomed during the year. Adjustments to existing documents are also covered by this annual plan. And, at the end of each annual term, clients are invited to have their annual review meeting.

Some of the main reasons clients seek our services are:

Lifetime and Estate Planning

The majority of clients do seek estate planning services when they are middle-aged or older and are finally prompted to establish a traditional estate plan. The motivation may be their age, a health or financial concern or the experience of dealing with the care or estate of a family member who did not do any planning. Some seek only a Last Will or a Healthcare Proxy, with a single simple goal in mind. With our guidance and counseling, our clients quickly realize how the broader suite of planning documents, including Revocable Trusts and Powers of Attorney, are so valuable and effective.

For most clients, the deciding factor for doing their planning is the comfort in knowing that they have put in the effort of making all the arrangements up front, so that they and their loved ones will not have to be burdened with sorting out an unplanned estate or care plan at a time when they should be taking care of each other.

Asset Preservation and Tax Planning

Today’s lifetime and estate plans should be designed with provisions to minimize tax liabilities and provide sheltering of assets from certain claims. What assets can be protected and the type of protection available can only be identified through a conversation about your overall planning interests and your specific assets. Clients can sometimes get themselves into trouble by misunderstanding exactly what different planning options can and cannot do. Each decision made has some form of tradeoff. It is important to receive accurate information regarding all the pros and cons of managing your specific assets.

MassHealth/Medicaid Planning and Applications

Planning for long-term nursing care if often a concern that brings families and couples in for counseling. There are many ways that people can cause a great deal of unnecessary difficulty by taking actions that are prohibited by MassHealth, simply because they were unaware of the restrictions. Whether you wish to gain an early understanding of what one should be thinking about in making a plan or a concern for a spouse or parent who may be needing care fairly soon, consulting with a qualified MassHealth planning attorney is very important.

Probate Administration and Estate Settlement

When someone passes away without a good plan in place, with unfinished funding of their plan or even with only a Last Will in place, the result usually requires a Probate process. While we always encourage having a workable plan in place, in part to avoid Probate, our office does administer Probate matters for families when the need arises. The process is somewhat complicated, very tedious and most regrettably, slow. When family and loved ones need it the least, the hardship of filing and administering a Probate case is a burden we will take off the family’s hands, with thoughtfulness, professionalism and experience.

Trust Administration and Settlement

When someone has prepared a proper lifetime and estate plan, one or more trusts will be the centerpiece of that plan. Trusts empower the named Trustee to operate the trust assets for the benefit of the creator of the trust (the “Grantor”), when he or she is unable to manage those affairs on their own. Trusts are also designed to function similarly to how Last Wills have done so in the past, by designation the Grantor’s assets to beneficiaries after they have passed. Our office counsels and assists the Trustee(s) and family on how to manage trusts for the Grantor’s benefit and settle all types of trusts.

Conservatorships and Guardianships

There are many reasons that Conservatorships and Guardianships may be sought by families. Guardianships are and should be very important to the parents of minor children or a disabled adult. While not very likely, the loss of a single parent or both parents would leave the Probate Court in charge of appointing your child’s legal Guardian. As a parent, you have the legal right to name who that Guardian would be, but this can only be done through proper planning documents.

Families seeking a Conservatorship for a family member may have a variety of reasons. A Conservatorship could allow a parent or other family member to obtain and manage assets benefitting a minor child or disable adult. Since these “protected” individuals are unable to own assets in their own name, the Conservator would be appointed by the Court to manage the assets for the protected individual. Here too, proper planning documents may be able to avoid having to seek a Conservatorship through the Probate Court.

Both Conservatorships and Guardianships are complicated and lengthy legal processes that require considerable legal and procedural knowledge. Our office counsels and administers the entire court process for those needing this type of authority.

Long-Term Care Planning

Planning for long-term care can be a daunting decision, in part because we cannot predict with certainty what the future will bring. That uncertainty can add to the difficulty we have making plans for our futures. Obtaining reliable counseling from an experienced attorney can remove a great deal of those challenges by designing a plan that will provide the best outcomes under any circumstances.

Contact Collinson Law today and let us help you through these types of legal issues.

Collinson Law Office 34 Hayden Rowe Street, Suite 172 Hopkinton, MA 01748