I recently met with a prospective client who told me he really didn’t need estate planning. He already had a trust prepared by an attorney in another state; that attorney was “fantastic,” and he had been assured by that attorney that his trust was fine.
What he wanted was much simpler: he just needed North Carolina power of attorney documents. I could already tell this wasn’t going to go well, because he approached estate planning as though he were “buying documents” rather than working with a professional to develop an overall estate planning strategy. It’s like trying to buy a scalpel from a surgeon when what you need is your appendix removed.
Your Trust and Your Assets Have to Work Together
I explained that good estate planning attorneys don’t sell trusts, Wills, and powers of attorney one document at a time. We should look at the entire plan, including what you own, how those assets are titled, who can manage things if you become incapacitated, what happens when you die, and whether all of those pieces actually work together.
However, I told him that if all he really wanted was a set of North Carolina power of attorney documents, we could accommodate him. But if he wanted, I could run his existing trust through the AI-driven trust review system we’ve developed for our firm.
His trust scored 27% effectiveness under our proprietary review criteria. He hasn’t come back in yet to receive the full report, so I don’t know how that conversation will go, but I suspect it may be a little different from the discussion we had when he thought his existing estate plan was fine. The takeaway should be that having a document called a “trust” doesn’t automatically tell you whether that document contains the provisions needed to cover life’s (and death’s) possible contingencies.
Why an AI Trust Review Is Only as Good as Its Criteria
Situations like this are why we are now offering our free AI-drive trust review program for North Carolina residents. But I want to be clear about what I mean by “AI-drive,” because there is a huge difference between using AI intelligently and just throwing a legal document into a generic AI system and asking, “Is this a good trust?”
Our process is based on our own proprietary work examining the provisions in the trusts we use, documenting what each provision is designed to accomplish, and explaining what could happen if that provision is missing from the trust being reviewed. The AI is doing the comparison work, but the substance behind that comparison comes from the criteria and explanations we developed.
The Difference Between Generic AI and a Purpose-Built Trust Review
This distinction is important because an AI trust review is only as good as the parameters that were put into the system in the first place. I tell people that AI is like the fastest and hardest-working employee you could ever have with zero common sense. Imagine telling an employee, “Show up ready to work at exactly 7:55 a.m. and then clock in,” only to have the employee arrive at 9:55 a.m. because you never specified the time zone. Then you discover the employee isn’t wearing pants, but he insists that he is technically “ready to work” because you never specifically said pants were required.
That sounds ridiculous, but it is actually a pretty good description of one of the biggest problems with relying blindly on artificial intelligence. AI can process a tremendous amount of information very quickly, but it doesn’t magically know what you meant, what you forgot to ask, or what criteria should matter unless somebody provides those instructions. Give it bad or insufficient parameters, and it can give you a very polished, very confident, and very fast answer that is completely wrong.
We have also started conducting trust funding workshops for prospective clients, because reviewing the language of the trust is only one part of determining whether an estate plan is actually going to work. You can have an excellent revocable living trust sitting in a beautiful binder, but if your home, financial accounts, and other assets were never coordinated with that trust, your family can still end up dealing with probate.
As part of these workshops, attendees get our free trust review report so we can look at both sides of the equation: what the trust actually says and whether the assets are positioned so the plan can work the way it was intended.
North Carolina Residents – Free Trust Review
If you are a North Carolina resident and already have a trust, contact us at the law office and ask us about the Free Trust Review. You can find us at www.LivingTrustLawFirm.com. We are especially interested in helping North Carolina residents referred by existing clients and want another set of eyes on an estate plan that was prepared somewhere else. You may discover that everything is in great shape, or you may discover some things worth fixing now rather than leaving your family to discover them later.