Year-end Updates for Our Law Firm
We appreciate your patronage of our law firm and hope this letter update finds you well. I want to share some year-end updates with you, which may make it easier for you to continue to use our services or otherwise interact with our attorneys and support staff personnel.
First, we have enjoyed considerable success helping our existing and also new Elder Law, Estate Planning, Probate, Medicaid Eligibility Planning, Special Needs Planning, and VA Eligibility Planning clients and their families in 2015. Because many of our Estate Planning clients also own operating businesses or closely held corporations or limited liability companies, we also continue to offer related corporate and business planning and legal services for those clients. Also, as a continuing personal commitment to public service, I serve as the legal counsel for various local non-state governmental entities and constitutional officers.
Second, I am very proud of our staff support to our clients and their families in 2015, and the considerable assistance that our Associate Attorney, Alison E. Hickman, J.D., has brought to our law firm and its clients. We work well with each other to ensure that your legal needs are met in our practice areas.
Third, we have considerable resources to continue to assist you even when you are not actively updating your own plan, or using our legal services at a time of an immediate need. For example, our complimentary client consumer oriented newsletters, which are distributed by e-mail to subscribers, keep you up to date on significant Estate Planning, Elder Law, and Special Needs Planning developments. Our optional Legal Directives enrollment process allows you to maintain your Florida health care advance directives and supporting health care planning documents in a digital access format, available 24/7 as needed, at very little cost to you. Also, our frequent consumer seminar events, workshops, and open house events, allow you to stay on the cutting edge of planning updates, and connected with us, without any cost to attend or participate. In addition, we routinely offer reduced cost legal updates to your important planning documents, so that your planning will be effective and "ready to go" when needed! Remember, if you "Fail to plan, you plan to fail!"
Fourth, to better serve our clients and their families who live or work in Duval and St. Johns Counties, in January we will open a local office for scheduled attorney appointments in Hampton Professional Park, off of old "9A," now 295 East Beltway, at 7807 Baymeadows Rd. E., Ste. 403, Jacksonville, FL 32256. Our presence there will be scalable based on client demand and needs. You may continue to schedule all appointments for either office location through our main number, 904-264-8800, or our Jacksonville number, 904-268-8170.
Fifth, for those of you who have added or updated your e-mail addresses since we last met, or who have new phone numbers or mailing addresses, we ask that you please provide us with that updated information. The most efficient way to do that is to e-mail our receptionist, Paula Emery, at paula@floridaelder.com, or to call her with the information.
Sixth, we want to encourage all of our clients who have not updated their Durable Power of Attorney and their Health Care Surrogate Designation in response to our recent workshops and open house events to do so as soon as possible. We will be announcing an open house in the first quarter of 2016 at the Hampton Professional Park local office specifically for signing updated DPOAs and HCS Designations at a reduced cost to you. Please take advantage of that! We will also have a similar event at our main Orange Park office prior to July 1, 2016. Both of those event dates are TBA, so stay in touch with us to learn more.
Finally, if you haven't already done so, please try out our website, www.floridaelder.com, where we have added much helpful content in the last twelve (12) months. Also, please follow us on whatever social media platforms you regularly utilize. You can do that from the bottom right-hand corner of the home page of our website. We would love to be able to communicate with you in real time as to legal developments and firm-related events which may be of interest or importance to you and your family.
Our primary focus remains on you and your family. We want you to have a strong, serviceable, and flexible lifetime legal plan, based on your and your family's particular needs. We want you to qualify for any assistance or eligibility programs which you are legally entitled to, particularly with regard to ensuring that you receive appropriate long-term care and/or disability planning benefits when and if needed during your lifetime. Upon your death, we want to ensure that your property is efficiently transferred with a minimum of governmental supervision, oversight, taxation, and third-party threats or interference, consistent with your desired goals. We look forward to continuing to serve you in 2016
Sincerely yours,
Grady H. Williams, Jr., LL.M., Managing Attorney