From JD Supra — By Michael Rossi of Conn Kavanaugh —
As families begin planning for the transition of assets, family businesses, and personal legacies, it is natural to approach the process as a shared family undertaking. Everyone may have the same goal: preserving wealth, avoiding conflict, and ensuring a smooth transition to the next generation. From that perspective, it can seem reasonable to assume that one lawyer can simply represent “the whole family.”
In estate planning, however, that assumption can create important legal and ethical questions. Planning for multiple generations simultaneously – whether involving spouses, parents and adult children, or family business owners and their successors – can create uncertainty about whose interests the lawyer represents. Family harmony may be the goal, but experienced estate planning attorneys must carefully respect legal and ethical boundaries to ensure that the resulting plan is both legally sound and defensible.
Who Is the Client?
This question of who a lawyer actually represents can be more complicated in estate planning than in many other areas of law. Estate planning lawyers frequently work with multiple people who have closely connected interests. A lawyer may meet with a husband and wife to prepare reciprocal estate plans, help parents think through a transfer of a family business, or work with several generations as a family develops a long-term wealth transfer strategy.
But close family relationships do not automatically mean that everyone is the lawyer’s client.
Do you need an attorney to handle your Estate Planning, Probate, Special Needs, or Medicaid/Medicare issues? Find a qualified member of the Ohio Chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys in the Ohio NAELA Directory.