Legal insurance plans are an excellent way for clients to be able to afford an estate plan. I work with two of the major legal insurance plans and welcome clients with these plans.
ARAG is a plan available to UC employees, state of California employees, and employees of a number of corporations. Coverage varies depending on the employer group. For UC employees, ARAG generally covers the lion’s share of cost of having me do a trust-based estate plan. With employer groups that have lesser coverage, ARAG’s and my policy is to bill ARAG for the portion of the work that ARAG covers and then I offer a 25% discount off my normal hourly rate for work not covered by ARAG. This means that even without full legal insurance plan coverage, the client’s cost for an estate plan is a fraction of what they would pay without any coverage.
Hyatt is another plan. It is actually an umbrella organization for dozens of different plans. If you have Hyatt coverage, find out ahead of time what portion of an estate plan they will cover. The same policy applies: any portion of an estate plan not covered by Hyatt is something I bill at 25% off my normal hourly rate.
Both ARAG and Hyatt require that eligible employees sign up for coverage. A monthly fee is deducted from the client’s pay check.
Legal insurance is an employee benefit, meaning it is something the employee has already earned! Why not take advantage of a benefit that is already part of your salary? And, if you’ve already done your estate plan using one of the legal insurance plans, you may certainly come back to my office for an update. Tell your co-workers to take advantage of these useful employee benefits.
