Estate Planning, Coordinated
Estate planning is a legal discipline, and we are not attorneys. Meridian's role is to coordinate the financial and tax dimensions of your estate plan with the attorney you choose — so the documents your attorney drafts actually reflect your full financial picture.
What We Do (and Don't Do)
What we do
- Map your full balance sheet, beneficiary designations, and titling against your goals
- Identify gaps between your existing documents and your current circumstances
- Coordinate with your estate attorney on funding decisions, trust selection, and document scope
- Model the tax implications of gifting, charitable strategies, and basis planning
- Maintain a living estate-plan summary so your family can act when needed
What we don't do
- Draft wills, trusts, powers of attorney, or healthcare directives — those are legal documents your attorney prepares
- Provide legal advice of any kind
- Recommend attorneys without disclosing the basis for the recommendation
How a Typical Engagement Works
- Document inventory. We review your existing wills, trusts, beneficiary designations, account titling, and insurance policies.
- Gap analysis. We identify mismatches between your documents and your goals — for example, retirement account beneficiaries that haven't been updated since a remarriage.
- Attorney coordination. We schedule a working session with your attorney (or one you've selected from your own research) and walk them through your full financial picture so they can draft documents informed by it.
- Implementation. Once documents are signed, we make sure they're actually funded — titling, beneficiary updates, and trust fundings happen on a schedule, not in a drawer.
- Annual review. Your plan is revisited each year and after any major life event.
Tax Coordination
Estate planning is deeply tax-driven. Our planning team models gifting strategies, charitable remainder trusts, donor-advised funds, qualified small business stock, and basis-step-up planning alongside our tax planning specialists — and coordinates outcomes with your CPA before any irrevocable decisions are made.
Start the Conversation
If your estate documents are more than five years old, or if your financial situation has changed materially since they were drafted, schedule a complimentary review.
Schedule a Review