Attorney Keenan has focused his practice primarily on estate planning since 1997. We provide clients with last wills & testaments, powers of attorney, health care instructions and trusts. It is extremely important to have a full estate plan in place regardless of health, age or the size of your estate, and it is equally important to keep the plan updated.

If you are like most of our clients, you have probably been thinking about putting your estate plan in place for years. Or you did your estate planning a very long time ago (back when the kids were still minors!) and you have been thinking about updating the documents for years. We understand that life is hectic and it’s easy to put off your estate planning until things calm down. However, life rarely calms down. So we focus on making the estate planning process as convenient and understandable as possible for each our clients.

A Practical Approach to Estate Planning
”Practical” estate planning means that we do not recommend documents that are more complicated or more costly than you need. The best example of this is our approach to “revocable living trusts”. These types of trusts are alternatives to last wills & testaments which allow you to keep assets out of the probate process when you pass away. But a trust is much more expensive than a will, and then you need to spend time re-titling some assets after the trust is signed. Despite what many attorneys believe, trusts are not the right fit for all clients. We will take a close look at your particular family situation and assets, then recommend a trust only if it makes sense.

Our practical approach also means that we spend as much time as necessary to make sure that you fully understand each of the estate planning documents that we recommend. We always use flat fees for our estate planning work, so don’t worry if this requires extra emails, phone calls and meetings…you will not be running up the bill! We also ditch the “legalese” for down-to-earth, plain English communication when we walk through the documents with you. We will not schedule a signing appointment until you are 100% comfortable with your documents.

A Thorough Analysis
After 25+ years of estate planning, we know that no two clients are alike. Despite what online legal document preparation services may have you think, estate planning should not be a fill-in-the-blank project. We will take a close look at the nature of your estate, how assets are titled, consider how your beneficiary-driven assets (retirement accounts, life insurance, etc.) factor in, address tax issues, and discuss any extraordinary family dynamics you may have and how to best address them in your plan. We may not have seen it all yet, but we have seen a lot over the last quarter century! We will analyze your estate from every angle and use some creative drafting in your documents if need be.

In short, after working with us you will walk away with the peace-of-mind that comes from knowing that you have a carefully thought-out, comprehensive estate plan in place. You will know that if you unexpectedly pass away or become incapacitated, you have made arrangements for things to go as smoothly as possible for your loved ones and that your wishes will be carried out.

That’s really what estate planning is all about.

Please click here for our “Estate Planning in Connecticut” blog to learn more about this topic.