Competitive Products

There are a number of other will and trust drafting systems available.

Drafting Wills and Trust Agreements on GhostFill (ThomsonReuters), by Michael L.M. Jordan, is a software program for the assembly of wills, revocable trusts and other documents.

WealthDocs (WealthCounsel) is a software solution for the automated assembly of estate-planning documents. It includes a series of Practice Systems (or modules) that automate drafting.

Lawgic (Lawgic Publishing Company) is a state-specific trusts and estates drafting program available for California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland and New York. The system produces wills, disability planning documents and a number of trusts.

Trust Plus (ThomsonReuters) produces basic wills and trusts, both revocable and irrevocable. Included, among other documents, are state-specific powers of attorney and living wills.

What’s It All About?

Wealth Transfer Planning produces comprehensive wills and revocable trusts (including pour over wills, disclaimer wills, joint revocable trusts with complex generation-skipping tax planning, and a four trust will addressing state estate tax planning with a trust for the excess federal qualified terminable interest property) with the typical range of marital deduction and credit trust variations. State-specific language is included for all states and the District of Columbia. Identifying the client’s state of legal residence (for wills) or the state of governing law (for trusts) directs WTP as to which state-specific language to use.

Wealth Transfer Planning includes client engagement letters, fee agreements and intake questionnaires, from which it generates a letter that lists and summarizes the planning documents prepared. It allows the import of contact records from Microsoft Outlook and integrates with Time Matters software.

In addition to forms for qualified personal residence trusts (QPRTs), grantor retained annuity trusts (including walton-style GRATs), grantor retained unitrusts, various defective grantor trusts, living qualified terminable interest property trusts, split purchase trusts, charitable split interest trusts (including net income with makeup charitable remainder unitrusts), charitable trusts, irrevocable life insurance trusts, Section 2503(c) trusts for minors, community property agreements, and marital agreements, Wealth Transfer Planning has added forms for:

• Extra Crummey trusts (described in “New WTP Form: Extra Crummey Trust: It May Be the Best Annual Exclusion Vehicle Around” by Jonathan G. Blattmachr and Michael L. Graham and “Planning Options for UTMA Accounts and Other Transfers to Minors” by Stephanie E. Heilborn and Jonathan G. BlattMachr);
• supercharged credit shelter trusts for dealing with unequal spousal estates (described in “Supercharged Credit Shelter Trust” by Jonathan G. Blattmachr and Diana S. C. Zeydel and “The Supercharged Credit Shelter Trust Super Idea for Married Couples Is Now on WTP” by Mitchell M. Gans, Jonathan G. Blattmachr and Diana S.C. Zeydel);
• multiple options to fully utilize exemptions of both spouses regardless of order of deaths;
• testamentary special needs trusts for all, or specified, beneficiaries;
• joint irrevocable trusts;
• single beneficiary trusts
• Louisiana compliance and state-specific documents;
• pre-residuary cash gifts in trust;
• installment sales to grantor trusts (see Jonathan G. Blattmachr and Michael L. Graham’s “Gift Tax Safety Nets for Installment Sales to Grantor Trusts”);
• charitable remainder trusts with a “term of years” option; and
• powers of attorney, living wills and health care directives for a variety of states (including Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, and Washington).

The available forms are described in detail in Wealth Transfer Planning V. 4.0 Update – Release Notes.

WTP also delivers strategic planning memoranda discussing estate and tax-planning strategies for a variety of planning devices and situations, including:

• generation skipping tax (GST) planning;
• extra Crummey trusts;
• estate planning for domestic partners;
• using a GRAT vs. an installment sale to a grantor trust;
• charitable giving (charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, private foundations);
• using a split purchase trust in lieu of a QPRT (described in “Estate Planning for Persons with Less than $5 Million” by Jonathan G. Blattmachr, Georgiana J. Slade and Bridget J. Crawford);
• tax planning in decoupled states;
• structuring marital, family and descendants trusts;
• using cascading Crummey powers (described in “Cascading Crummey Powers” by Jonathan G. Blattmachr and Michael L. Graham) to avoid the GST;
• dealing with carryover basis (see Jonathan G. Blattmachr’s, “Planning for the Unknown for 2010 and Beyond – Carryover Basis and No Estate Tax or a Revised Wealth Transfer System” (Evaluation Services, Inc.) and Jonathan G. Blattmachr’s, “Fingernails on the Blackboard: Thinking About the Possibility of Carryover Basis in 2010”); and
• the supercharged credit shelter trust for married couples.

What About Help and Support?

Support options for WTP include email, telephone or live online service, which includes chat and online control of your system, if granted. Support is free for 30 days after purchase and is fee-based thereafter. For the standard plan, support plans can be paid based on a per-incident basis or through a yearly support plan. Support is included in the professional plan.

Help for WTP includes a tutorial and online support. Basic training, formatting and planning and drafting classes are available.

A Resources Library is available on the publisher’s website. The publisher also provides WTP and Elder Law & Special Needs Planning discussion forums.

Where Do You Get This Software?

Wealth Transfer Planning and other InterActive Legal Systems products are available from

Interactive Legal Systems
100 Highland Park Village, Suite 200
Dallas, Texas 75205
Phone 888-315-0872
Fax 410-472-0609
Website: www.ilsdocs.com
Pricing: A matrix with the complete pricing system (based on the product and number of users) for all the Interactive Legal System products is available at www.ilsdocs.com/products/pricing.php