Why We Have a Private Meeting With Our Clients

How Confidentiality Plays a Part in a Successful Estate Plan

At Safe Habor Estate Law, we understand the importance of privacy when it comes to discussing legal matters. That is why we have a private meeting with each of our clients to ensure that every aspect of their estate plan is discussed in a comfortable setting. When we meet with our clients 1-on-1, we are able to provide our clients with personalized advice and recommendations that will best suit their needs. Our team at Safe Harbor Estate Law takes the time to understand each of our clients and their wishes for the future. This private meeting with our clients allows us to create a comprehensive estate plan that will provide them with the security and peace of mind they need.

What You’ll Learn From This Video

• Why we meet with our clients privately before including anyone else
• How using the four Cs ensures success when meeting with clients privately
• When confidentiality plays a part in discussing our clients wishes for their estate plan

We are committed to ensuring that our clients have the tools and resources they need for a successful estate plan. We take great care in providing legal services at the utmost discretion, for both our clients and their loved ones. Don’t wait, call us today at 612-615-9535 to speak with an experienced attorney today!

HERE IS THE TRANSCRIPT FROM THIS VIDEO

Margaret Barrett: At Safe Harbor Estate Law, we are all about empowering families to protect what matters most. As part of that, we have a private meeting with the client at each meeting. We want you and your loved ones to understand how the private meeting is important to protecting you, your wishes, your loved ones, and your assets. We do value family involvement, and we want to honor your wishes to include helpful family members in meetings. but we will still take time alone because of the ethical requirements that we classify as the four Cs. The first C is client identification. We need to identify who our client is. Normally, it’s the person with the most at stake, who’s normally the disabled or elderly person. We owe our duties of loyalty, diligence, competence, and confidentiality only to our client. Second, we need to minimize conflicts of interest. One way we do that is by represent just one person or one married couple. Yes, we understand that other family members may have issues at stake in the matter, but we can best represent our clients if we are representing just one. Third, confidentiality. We lawyers mustkeep confidential information that our client shares with us. We cannot share it with other family members unless the client approves. Sometimes, clients want us to share everything. Sometimes, it’s more limited. In all cases, we do strive to work with the client and whomever they want to include so that everybody is fully informed and that we are responsive to theirgoals. Fourth, capacity. We have specialethical responsibilities to persons whose capacity formaking decisions may be diminished. We owe the same duties and respect to the clients whomay have diminished capacity as to all our other clients. Meeting privately with the client andgiving them time to express their wishes is very important so that we can ensure theyunderstand and they are making their own choices. We find most people can tell us theproblem and how we can help. We may need to ask family members to fill in details aftergetting general direction from the client. If we do conclude that the client doesn’t havecapacity, unfortunately, we won’t be able to have them sign documents, but we will work withyou to explore the other options to reach your goals. We don’t want our clients’wishes anddocuments to come undone because we allowed family members to be too involved in theprocess. And we don’t think that’s the kind of court case you want to have in your family either.I hope you can see that our private meetings do protect you, your wishes, and your loved ones.If you have any questions in this process, please give us a call.