Jill Beth Singer

Hi, I am Jill Singer, a resident of Wellington, Florida, and I started this practice to bring awareness to my community about the importance of estate planning. I grew up seeing first hand the devastation and misery that comes with relatives passing with no planning in place. I watched my mother have to battle it out in court with her cousins when my great aunt and uncle passed with no planning in place, only to have to spend valuable time and resources to ensure that what should have stayed in our family stayed in our family. In the end, per a Court's direction, part of the assets went to my Great Aunt's family across the country with whom she had no relationship and had not spoken to in half a century. What's worst is that she explicitly told us she wanted nothing to do with her family and deeply disliked them. I cannot imagine her reaction if she were to have learned what ended up happening to her assets. All of this could have been prevented with a simple Will in place.

My mother put in place a family Trust years ago, and just recently realized that a condo that she purchased in 2001 was never re-titled into her Trust. If she had passed today, her estate would have had to go through the time and expense of probate because the condo was not protected within her Trust. This would have undermined the very reason that she spent so much money decades ago to put her trust in place in the first place. Her traditional Estate Planning Attorney did not have systems in place to check for post-planning changes to her assets which would have prevented her estate from being at risk for all of these years.

My father recently passed away from brain cancer. During his last few years struggling with his condition and his pending demise, I wanted my time with him to be about him enjoying the short time he had left. As much as I wanted to ask him about his wishes for myself and my family and for any "final words and thoughts", I hated to have to bring this up and as a result I did not; thinking I would when the time was right, and there was always "next time". In the end, my dad's cancer came back with a vengeance, and we were told he only had 1-2 weeks left. He mentally deteriorated very quickly and went into hospice care and was only alert for a small amount of time each day. I certainly did not want to bring up death knowing that these were his final moments of life. Now that he's gone, I wish I had asked him questions about his thoughts and feelings and about his own final arrangements, and what mattered most to him, and what he envisioned for us. As a result, I deeply regret not having had that conversation with my dad while I still could on top of the deep sorrow that I feel from his recent and untimely demise.

It is from these experiences and from hearing others' experiences that I strive to make a difference and to ensure that people have proper planning in place to protect their loved ones; and systems in place to prevent traditional pitfalls that prevent plans from working the way that they were intended. I also have a built in "legacy" session which goes along with the planning I provide to give people the opportunity to share and record their words of wisdom and values for their loved ones; so as to avoid what happened to myself with my father, never having had that and being left with regrets. I also, want to build long term relationships with the people that I serve so as to foster communication and not quench it. Yes, I am a different type of attorney.