Last week, I was contacted by Alice Gomstyn, a reporter from ABC News who was writing a story about Heath Ledger, who as you’ll recall from my article last week, died with an out of date Will that didn’t mention his daughter Matilda.

Alice’s article confirms what I’ve been saying all along … most lawyers are shockingly clueless when it comes to building meaningful relationships with their clients and making sure their clients’ estate plans will work when their families need them.

Attorney David A. Looney, a lawyer in Akron, Ohio, quoted in the article sadly represents the vast majority of lawyers out there who claim to have relationships with their clients, but when you look a little deeper what you really find is the mere preparation of form documents and nothing more.

It’s left up to the client to contact their lawyer when changes happen in their life or the law and as we’ve seen with Anna Nicole and Heath Ledger that far too often doesn’t happen.

I am keenly aware of this not only because my father in law died with an estate plan that left his assets owned improperly, but because I saw it in my own law practice when I first launched my business.

I’d talk a lot about relationship with my clients, but when I gave my business a good hard look, there was no relationship to be found - my clients signed their documents, took them home and didn’t think about estate planning again.

Once I realized this, I vowed to change it.

Personal Family Lawyers send out a monthly newsletter, this weekly online magazine and review their clients’ plans at least every three years.  All this so you don’t have to worry that the planning you spent thousands of dollars on won’t work.

And, most excitingly, we launched our Family Wealth VIP Membership program so clients could really have an ongoing relationship with their personal lawyer without having to worry about hourly fees.

What does this mean?

For clients who participate in our membership program, we review the plan annually instead of every three years and changes to the plan are made at no charge. Plus, we update our clients Family Wealth Inventory annually to ensure that none of the assets end up in the state Department of Unclaimed Property because they are overlooked after death or forced to go through the long, expensive, and unnecessary probate process because they were not titled properly.

Most excitingly, clients on our membership program are able to call us whenever there’s any event in their life that has legal or financial implications and not worry about getting a bill in the mail weeks later.  We are able to be our clients’ true personal lawyer for life.

As we say, it’s like having a lawyer in the family.  And, it’s one of the most critical relationships you can have if you are serious about building wealth and leaving your family with the guidance of someone you trust after you are gone.