Two to four weeks, seven steps, one finished plan.

What to Expect When You Work with Simon Law Group

One of the most common reasons people delay estate planning is uncertainty about the process itself. They are not sure what is involved, how long it takes, or how much of their time it will require. So they wait, and the plan that would protect their family stays unwritten. At Simon Law Group, we have designed a process that removes that uncertainty: seven defined steps, a predictable timeline, and a defined-scope fee quoted in writing before any work begins. Most estate plans are completed within two to four weeks from the initial consultation, depending on complexity. The pace is set largely by how quickly you return the questionnaire, not by how long we take to draft.

Below is a detailed overview of each step. Every step is designed to respect your time while ensuring that no detail is overlooked, because in estate planning the cost of a missed detail is not paid by you -- it is paid by the people who survive you, at the worst possible moment. Our goal is a plan that is legally sound under New Jersey law, properly executed, and -- where a trust is involved -- fully funded before we consider our work complete. The right structure for any given family depends on the size and makeup of the estate, and we explain those choices in plain terms at the consultation rather than defaulting everyone to the same template.

Step 1: Initial Consultation (Day 1)

Every engagement begins with a consultation request, either by phone, video conference, or in person at one of our New Jersey offices. During this meeting, we will:

• Discuss your family structure, including children, grandchildren, and any dependents with special needs
• Review your assets at a high level, including real estate, retirement accounts, life insurance, and business interests
• Understand your goals, such as protecting your spouse, providing for children, minimizing taxes, or charitable giving
• Explain the documents you will need and how they work together
• Provide a clear, written quote based on the scope of work required -- see our packages and pricing

The consultation typically lasts 30 to 45 minutes. There is no obligation to proceed, and you will leave with a clear understanding of what an estate plan would look like for your situation -- including an honest read on whether a will-based plan is sufficient or whether a trust would serve you better. No preparation is needed -- just bring your questions.

Intake also includes the professional checks that have to happen before instructions become a draft. We identify potential conflicts, including prior representation, a family-business overlap, blended-family tension, creditor pressure, disputed capacity, or a beneficiary trying to direct the plan. The attorney must be able to confirm the client's capacity and voluntariness and determine whether spouses or other participants have aligned interests. Those safeguards are informed by the New Jersey Rules of Professional Conduct1. They protect the client and clarify whom the firm can represent before confidential planning proceeds.

Questions the design meeting answers

• Who should make financial and medical decisions during incapacity?
• Who should serve as executor and trustee, and which alternate fiduciary should serve if the first choice cannot?
• Should beneficiaries inherit outright or in trust, and at what ages or milestones?
• Which assets pass by title, beneficiary designation, trust, or will?
• Are there New Jersey inheritance-tax2 concerns for beneficiaries outside the exempt Class A group?
• Is federal estate-tax portability or more specialized trust planning relevant?

For 2026, the federal basic exclusion amount is $15,000,000 per person under P.L. 119-21, signed July 4, 2025, according to the Internal Revenue Service3. That threshold does not decide whether planning is useful. Fiduciary control, incapacity, beneficiary protection, real estate, and recordkeeping often matter more to families below the federal threshold.

Will-Based or Trust-Based? Why the Structure Comes First

Before the steps below make sense, it helps to know what is being built. For many New Jersey adults, a will-based plan -- a last will and testament, a durable financial power of attorney, and an advance healthcare directive -- is a complete and appropriate plan. It names guardians for minor children, appoints an executor, directs who receives what, and authorizes someone to act for you in life and after death.

For other families, a revocable living trust is the better foundation, and the reason is practical rather than promotional. A trust is often the more suitable structure where the net estate is larger (frequently considered above roughly $250,000), where there is real estate -- particularly property in more than one state -- where the family is blended or a second marriage is involved, or where a beneficiary is a minor or has special needs and a direct inheritance would do more harm than good. A properly funded trust can keep the covered assets out of the public probate process, provide for management of those assets if you become incapacitated, and let you set the terms and timing of distributions rather than handing assets over outright. A will, by contrast, takes effect only at death and only after probate, and it cannot manage assets during a period of incapacity.

Neither structure is universally "better." The right one depends on the size and makeup of your estate and what you want to happen if you are alive but unable to act. We make that recommendation at the consultation, and explain the reasoning, and the steps that follow are the same disciplined sequence either way.

Step 2: Information Gathering (Days 2-7)

After the consultation, if you decide to move forward, we will send you a comprehensive questionnaire. This document collects the specific information we need to draft your estate plan, including:

• Full legal names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers for you and your spouse
• Names and ages of all children and other beneficiaries
• Your choices for executor, trustee, guardian, power of attorney agent, and healthcare proxy
• A summary of your assets, debts, and account types
• Any specific wishes for asset distribution, charitable gifts, or special provisions
• Current beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance policies

We provide the questionnaire in digital format so you can complete it at your convenience. Most clients return it within a few days to a week. Having recent financial statements, insurance policy declarations, and deed information handy will make the process faster.

Step 3: Document Drafting (Days 8-14)

Once we receive your completed questionnaire, our attorneys draft your estate planning documents. Depending on the package, this may include a last will and testament, a revocable living trust, a durable financial power of attorney, an advance healthcare directive, and any additional documents such as a special needs trust or irrevocable trust.

The final document set may also include a HIPAA authorization, a pour-over will, deeds or assignments for assets intended for trust administration, and beneficiary-designation guidance for retirement accounts, life insurance, annuities, and payable-on-death accounts. Draft review covers names and addresses, fiduciary order, beneficiary shares, tax-sensitive gifts, trustee powers, and whether the documents agree with the way assets are titled.

Drafting typically takes five to seven business days. We then send you the draft documents for review. You can review them at your own pace and share them with your financial advisor or accountant if you wish. We encourage questions and will schedule a follow-up call or meeting to walk through any provisions you want to discuss.

Step 4: Revisions and Finalization (Days 15-21)

After you have reviewed the drafts, we incorporate reasonable changes within the agreed scope. This is the stage where the plan stops being a template and becomes yours: a clause about who serves as guardian if your first choice cannot, a distribution that holds a child's share in trust until a chosen age rather than handing it over at eighteen, a specific gift to a sibling or a charity. Most clients need one round of revisions; estate-planning packages include up to three reasonable drafting-revision rounds before finalization. A material scope change -- for example, adding trust planning to a will-only engagement -- is quoted before additional work proceeds or handled at $495/hour under the signed Fee Agreement.

Step 5: Document Signing (Days 22-28)

Once the documents are finalized, we schedule signing and execution at our office. Where appropriate, we can also coordinate remote execution support by video with a mobile notary dispatched to your location in New Jersey. During signing and execution:

• We review each document with you one final time before you sign
• Wills are executed with two witnesses under N.J.S.A. 3B:3-21; as a firm practice, we also include a notarized self-proving affidavit under N.J.S.A. 3B:3-42 to simplify later probate.
• Powers of attorney are signed and acknowledged in the manner required for New Jersey financial powers of attorney.
• Advance directives are executed under the NJ Advance Directives for Health Care Act and may be notarized or signed before two adult witnesses.
• Trust documents are executed and ready for funding

The signing meeting typically takes 30 to 45 minutes. You will receive a complete set of original documents and we retain copies in our secure file system.

Execution is matched to the document and to the institutions that must accept it later. Powers of attorney, trusts, deeds, and health-care documents do not all use the same formalities. Identity, capacity, voluntariness, witnesses, acknowledgments, and notarization are confirmed as applicable so the signed set can withstand later use by the Surrogate, title companies, banks, recorders, and medical providers. The New Jersey Rules of Court3 govern the later court procedure if a will must be offered for probate or becomes disputed.

Step 6: Trust Funding (Begins Immediately After Signing)

If your plan includes a revocable living trust, the trust must be funded to do its job. Funding a trust means transferring ownership of your assets from your individual name to the name of your trust. This is arguably the most important step in the process, and the one most often overlooked by firms that treat estate planning as a document-assembly exercise. The reason matters: a trust controls only the assets that have actually been retitled into it. Assets left in your individual name are generally not governed by the trust and ordinarily pass through probate at death regardless of what the trust document says -- which is precisely the outcome the trust was meant to avoid. Funding is what converts the document into the protection you paid for.

Simon Law Group provides detailed funding instructions and assists you with:

• Retitling real estate by preparing and recording a new deed
• Updating bank and brokerage account registrations
• Changing beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance policies
• Transferring ownership of vehicles, business interests, and other titled property

We follow up to confirm that funding is complete. We do not consider your estate plan finished until your assets are properly titled.

Some implementation timing is controlled by others. County recording offices, mortgage servicers, retirement custodians, insurance companies, banks, and business partners may require their own forms or review. We distinguish completed legal documents from unfinished implementation tasks and track open deeds, retitling requests, assignments, beneficiary forms, and confirmations until the agreed funding work is closed.

The two-to-four-week estimate describes the usual path from consultation through drafting and signing for a typical plan. Funding is a separate implementation stage and may continue for several weeks or, where outside custodians, deeds, lenders, or business interests are involved, several months. The schedule is a planning framework rather than a fixed deadline; urgency does not justify skipping conflict, capacity, execution, or funding requirements.

This is why we treat funding as part of the engagement rather than a homework assignment handed to you at signing. A trust that exists only on paper is a common and avoidable failure, and it is one we close out before we call the work done.

Step 7: Ongoing Review

Estate plans are not static documents. The plan you sign reflects your family and your assets as they are today; both change. A guardian you named may no longer be the right choice, an executor may move away or predecease you, a beneficiary designation may quietly drift out of step with your will, and a child born after signing needs to be added. New Jersey and federal estate-tax thresholds also shift over time, and a plan built around one set of numbers can need adjusting under another. For these reasons we recommend reviewing your plan at least once per year and whenever a significant life event occurs -- the birth or adoption of a child, a marriage, a divorce, a death in the family, relocation, a major change in assets, a business sale, serious illness, estrangement, or a change in tax law. Maintenance is practical too: keep signed originals secure, tell fiduciaries where to find them, preserve beneficiary confirmations, and update the asset list. Simon Law Group offers an annual review service so the plan keeps pace with the life it was written to protect.

Start with the decisions that determine the drafting and funding path

The timeline depends on the choices that shape the documents: fiduciaries and alternates, beneficiaries, guardian nominations, distribution terms, incapacity instructions, asset ownership, and whether trust funding is part of the scope. Bring existing estate documents, an asset and account list, deeds, current beneficiary forms, and the names and circumstances of the people who may serve or receive property. Counsel can then set the will-based or trust-based path, written scope, drafting sequence, signing requirements, and open funding tasks. Call (800) 709-1131 or complete the questionnaire to request that planning review.