Estate Planning, Family Law, Trust Administration, and Probate in Santa Barbara County

Estate Planning

Planning for the Future

estate planning

At Penner & Purves, PC, we provide comprehensive representation for estate planning. One of our attorneys, J.A.A. Purves, is a licensed Personal Family Lawyer® through the New Law Business Model. He is the only Personal Family Lawyer® in Santa Barbara County and is thus uniquely well-equipped to handle complex issues that invariably surface in the process of estate planning. We can discuss your short- and long-term goals, your family dynamics, and other circumstances to help establish an estate plan tailored to your unique needs.

What makes our firm different is that we were built with the needs of growing families in mind. We understand you are BUSY. You are growing. You are planning for a life of prosperity and you value convenience and efficiency. You are raising children, and caring for elderly parents, while also working hard to build your own nest egg for a lifetime of support. You want to know you’ve made the best decisions for your family and that your plan will work when your loved ones need it most. You want to make sure your minor children would be raised by the people you choose, and never by anyone you wouldn’t want, and that your teens and adult children are properly prepared to care for you and what you leave behind.

You want to feel confident that you’ve made the right choices, and handled everything so that you aren’t leaving behind a mess when something happens.

That is our focus as well. We’ve developed unique systems to give you the same access to a Personal Family Lawyer® as was previously only available to the super-wealthy, so you can have the guidance you need to build and maintain a life of prosperity and wealth. And, our estate planning services are designed to keep your family out of court and out of conflict, which is the greatest risk to the people you love and all you have created. Even if you’ve already worked with a traditional lawyer or created documents online, it is likely that your estate plan has not been regularly updated for changes in your life or in the law.

We encourage communication with our clients. In fact, everything we do in estate planning is billed on a flat-fee basis, agreed to in advance, so there are never any surprises.

We have a whole team to serve you. When you call our office to ask your quick question, you won’t have to wait hours or days for a phone call back. You’ll get your question answered, right away. And, if you need to schedule a more in-depth legal or strategic call with your Personal Family Lawyer®, a call will be scheduled when you’re both available and ready for the call so we can make the very best use of your time and not waste your time by leaving voicemail after voicemail back and forth.

Lastly, we believe your financial wealth is only a small part of your overall “Family Wealth” which is made up of your far more valuable — and most often lost upon incapacity or death — intellectual, spiritual, and human assets. These assets are what make you who you are, and sum up what’s most important to you. And, a survey of inheritors has revealed that what they care about even more than inheriting your money, is inheriting these intangible assets.

Most estate plans only focus on the transfer of your financial wealth to the next generation. Most people have such great intentions of passing on the intangible, but very few ever get around to it. It’s just not a priority, until it’s too late. That’s why we build the capture and passage of these most valuable assets into every estate plan we create. Not only will we help you pass on your money, but also your values, your insights, your stories and your experience — the truly valuable assets your loved ones care about the most.

If you were to peruse the other areas of our law practice, you would find that it is often the case that many of the problems and conflicts that people and families have directly result from the lack of intentional planning. An expensive and dragged-out Probate proceeding in court is the consequence of failure to have a working estate plan. A Conservatorship proceeding is another direct result of a failure in estate planning. And, if we are honest with ourselves, many a divorce, legal separation, or child custody dispute is a direct result of a couple not having wise and prudent financial planning and structures that make their family secure. Lack of intentional estate planning can lead to the harms and hurt feelings that result from lack of commitment and absence of intentional acts to protect one’s family.

We’ve developed a tool that allows you establish a plan and a structure for the security of your assets and of those you love. This includes the right legal decision making necessary to capture and pass on your whole family wealth, including your Intellectual, Spiritual, Human, and Financial assets. We can assist and guide you in preparing your estate plan when you come in for your Family Wealth Planning Session.

Call to book Your Planning Session with Attorney Purves at (805) 965-0085.