The conversation nobody wants to start
"Mom, have you updated your will?" There may be no more uncomfortable sentence in family life. Ask it and you sound greedy; don't ask and critical decisions go unmade for years. In our experience, the conversation — not the legal work — is the bottleneck. Drafting documents takes weeks. Getting a family to sit down and talk honestly about money, illness, and death can take a decade. Families don't fail to plan because they don't care. They fail to plan because nobody can bear to bring it up.
What it is
A facilitated family session, 60 to 90 minutes, held virtually or in person at any of our offices. The attorney serves as a neutral moderator — not an advocate for any family member, including whoever booked the session. We guide the conversation through structured questions: Who inherits? Who decides if someone can't? Who serves as executor, trustee, or agent? What does this family actually value? The structure keeps things productive and civil, and the neutral third party makes it possible to say what relatives can't say to each other.
What you leave with
Every session ends with a written summary: the decisions the family reached, the questions still open, and a clear recommendation of which documents should be created or updated — and for whom. Nothing is signed in the session and nobody is committed to anything. The summary simply turns a hard conversation into a concrete plan, so that six months later, no one is arguing about what was said. What the family does with it is entirely up to the family.
Who it's for
Adult children worried about aging parents who "have it handled" but can't say where the will is. Blended families where inheritance questions feel too delicate to raise. Business families where succession and fairness are tangled together. Couples who have postponed planning for years because they can't agree on guardians or executors. If your family has been circling this conversation without ever landing it, a neutral moderator and one structured hour is usually all it takes.
The Family Conversation Service is offered for a flat fee, quoted in advance — no hourly surprises. The session itself is facilitation, not legal advice, and does not by itself create an attorney-client relationship with any participant. We keep what is discussed in the session confidential within our firm. Because the session is facilitation rather than legal representation, attorney-client privilege may not apply, and participants should agree among themselves how the discussion will be treated.
One structured hour can end years of postponement. Book a free consultation to see whether the Family Conversation Service fits your family — no pressure either way.