You’d spend $4,500 to prevent a $100,000 problem in any other area of your life. If your mechanic told you a $4,500 repair today would prevent $100,000 in engine damage next year, you wouldn’t think twice. If your doctor said a $4,500 procedure now would avoid a $100,000 surgery later, you’d schedule it tomorrow.

Estate planning is no different – except the people who pay that $100,000 problem aren’t you. They’re your children.

Here’s the reality most Michigan families don’t confront: a comprehensive estate plan costs approximately $4,500. Not planning – letting the state decide who raises your kids, letting probate consume your assets, letting courts supervise your children’s inheritance for years – can cost your family $100,000 or more. That’s not marketing. That’s not a scare tactic. That’s arithmetic.

“We’re too young.” “We don’t have enough.” “We’ll get to it eventually.” These are the three most expensive sentences in estate planning. Let’s do the math and put every one of them to rest.

What’s Actually Inside a $4,500 Michigan Estate Plan – And Why It’s Not What You’ve Seen Online

When we say $4,500, we’re talking about the midpoint of a comprehensive trust-based estate plan ($2,500-$5,500) – the plan most Michigan families with minor children actually need. This isn’t a binder with a few generic documents. It’s a fully integrated protection system – and what Boroja, Bernier & Associates builds for Michigan families goes far beyond what most firms deliver or what you’ll find in any online DIY package.

Here’s exactly what’s inside. Every document. Every provision. No mystery.

The Core Legal Documents

Revocable Living Trust

This is the foundation of the entire plan. Your trust holds your assets during your lifetime, gives you complete control, and – critically – avoids probate entirely when you pass away. It includes detailed provisions for how assets are managed if you’re incapacitated and how they’re distributed after death. For families with minor children, the trust contains age-based distribution controls so your children receive their inheritance on your timeline, not the state’s.

Pour-Over Will

This is the safety net. Any assets not titled in the trust at the time of death get “poured over” into the trust through probate. It’s the backup plan – not the strategy. The pour-over will also contains your guardianship nominations for minor children, which is where you formally tell a Michigan court who you want raising your kids under MCL 700.5202. If a separate guardianship nomination document is needed based on your family’s circumstances, we prepare that too.

Financial Power of Attorney

Under Michigan’s Uniform Power of Attorney Act (MCL 556.201 et seq.), this document authorizes someone you trust to manage your finances if you’re unable to – paying bills, managing investments, handling real estate, running a business. Without one, your family may need to petition for conservatorship through the courts just to access your bank account. That process costs $5,000-$10,000+ to start and $10,000-$15,000 per year in ongoing court oversight. A power of attorney prevents all of it.

Patient Advocate Designation (Medical Power of Attorney)

Governed by MCL 700.5506-700.5520, this names the person who makes healthcare decisions for you when you can’t – surgeries, treatments, end-of-life care. Without one, your family may disagree about your care, and a court may have to intervene. This document eliminates that uncertainty.

Living Will (Advance Healthcare Directive)

This is your voice when you can’t speak. It documents your specific wishes about life-sustaining treatment, resuscitation, artificial nutrition, and comfort care. Your patient advocate uses this as their guide – and your family gets clarity instead of guilt about making decisions they were never sure you’d want.

HIPAA Authorization

Federal privacy laws prevent healthcare providers from sharing your medical information – even with your spouse or adult children – unless you’ve authorized it in writing. This document ensures the people who need your medical information to make decisions can actually access it. Without it, your family could be locked out of critical information during a medical emergency.

Final Disposition of Remains and Funeral Representative Designation

Michigan law allows you to designate who handles your burial or cremation arrangements and funeral decisions. This prevents family disagreements during an already devastating time – and ensures your wishes about final arrangements are documented and legally enforceable, not left to guesswork or family politics.

The Documents That Make the Plan Actually Work

This is where most firms stop. The “core” documents get signed, the binder gets handed over, and the client walks out thinking they’re done. They’re not – and the firms that stop here know it. At Boroja, Bernier & Associates, we build every supporting document your plan needs to function in the real world.

Declaration of Trust and Certificate of Trust

The declaration of trust does more than formally establish the trust. It declares that most or all of the client’s assets are transferred into the trust – even if record ownership doesn’t yet reflect it. This document doesn’t eliminate the formalities normally required to complete funding (changing account titles, updating beneficiary designations, etc.), but it creates documented evidence of the client’s intent that all assets belong in the trust.

That intent matters enormously if something goes wrong. If a beneficiary designation was never updated and the wrong person receives an account, the declaration of trust provides critical evidence in litigation – showing that the client’s intention was for assets to pass according to the trust’s terms, not through an outdated or overlooked designation. When a client is deceased and can’t testify about their wishes, this document speaks for them.

The certificate of trust is a companion document – a shorter form you can provide to banks, title companies, and financial institutions to prove the trust exists and identify the trustee, without revealing the private terms of the trust itself.

Assignments of Personal Property and Business Interests

Your trust only controls what’s inside it. These assignments formally transfer your personal property, S-corp shares, LLC membership interests, and other business ownership into the trust. Without them, those assets sit outside the trust and go through probate – defeating the purpose of the plan. We prepare these documents as part of your engagement.

Deed for Primary Residence

Your home is almost certainly your most valuable asset – and it’s the asset most commonly left outside the trust by accident. We prepare the deed transferring your primary residence into your trust and handle filing it with the county register of deeds. This isn’t your homework. This is our job, and we make sure it gets done.

Detailed Trust Funding Instructions

Your trust needs to be funded – meaning your bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and other financial assets need to be retitled in the trust’s name. We provide you with comprehensive, step-by-step instructions for every type of account and institution, along with the certificate of trust and any supporting documents you’ll need. You handle the conversations with your banks and financial institutions – but you won’t be guessing about what to say or what forms to submit. We arm you with everything you need to get it done right.

Personal Property Memorandum

This is your written instruction for who gets specific personal items – the jewelry, the artwork, the family heirlooms, the things that don’t have titles but carry enormous sentimental value. Michigan law allows you to incorporate a personal property memorandum by reference in your trust, and it can be updated without amending the entire plan. This document prevents more family arguments than people realize.

The Provisions That Protect Your Children

This is where a comprehensive plan becomes a plan built specifically for parents – and where the difference between Boroja, Bernier & Associates and a generic plan becomes impossible to ignore.

Trust Provisions for Minor Children with Age-Based Distribution Controls

Instead of handing your child their entire inheritance at 18, your trust specifies when and how distributions happen – stretched out to whatever ages you believe are appropriate for your children and your family’s circumstances. Or distributions tied to milestones – education, first home purchase, starting a business. You decide. The trustee you chose manages the funds in the meantime, making distributions for your children’s health, education, maintenance, and support.

Your children benefit from the inheritance immediately – they just don’t receive the keys to the vault until you’re confident they’re ready. They just can’t blow it all at 19.

We also include protective provisions in the trust designed to shield your children’s inheritance from their creditors, ensuring that the wealth you built doesn’t end up satisfying someone else’s claims against your child

Guardianship Nominations for Minor Children

Named in your pour-over will and, where appropriate, in separate standalone documents, these nominations tell the court exactly who you want raising your children under MCL 700.5204. The court gives significant weight to a parent’s nomination – without one, the judge is guessing.

Temporary Guardianship Nominations for Minor Children

This is what sets a Boroja, Bernier & Associates plan apart from nearly every other firm’s approach – and it addresses the scenario that keeps parents up at night.

Here’s the reality: if both parents die in an accident or are incapacitated simultaneously, there is a gap between the moment it happens and the moment a court can formally appoint a permanent guardian. During that gap – which can last days or even weeks – your children are vulnerable. Without a designated temporary guardian, the default response is government intervention. Child Protective Services places your children in protective custody. Your kids are removed from their home, separated from the people they know, and placed with strangers – all while your family scrambles to get in front of a judge.

A temporary guardianship nomination eliminates that gap. Your designated temporary guardians are authorized to take immediate custody of your minor children the moment you’re unavailable – whether due to death, incapacitation, hospitalization, or any other emergency. They function as first responders for your children, stepping in before CPS or any government agency is involved. They’re authorized to make all decisions on your children’s behalf, including medical decisions, ensuring your kids are cared for by someone you chose from the very first moment – not placed in a system you’d never want them in.

Most Michigan parents don’t realize that the gap between “something happens to us” and “the court appoints a guardian” is the most dangerous period for their children. A temporary guardianship nomination closes that gap entirely. It’s one of the most important documents in the plan – and most firms don’t even mention it.

Anatomical Gift Authorization

Documents your wishes about organ and tissue donation – or your decision not to donate. Clear, legally binding, and one less decision your family has to make during a crisis.

Digital Asset Consent and Access Provisions

Your digital life – email accounts, social media, cryptocurrency, online financial accounts, cloud storage, digital photos – needs to be accessible to the people managing your estate. These provisions and authorizations ensure your trustee and personal representative can access, manage, and close your digital accounts without hitting privacy walls that lock them out.

How the $100,000 Problem Adds Up When You Don’t Have This Plan

This is the section most law firms won’t write – because they’d rather keep pricing vague and let fear do the selling. At Boroja, Bernier & Associates, we believe you deserve the actual numbers. So here they are.

Probate administration: $10,000-$15,000 (for typical cases). Without a trust, your assets go through Michigan probate court. That means attorney fees, personal representative fees, court filing costs, and 7-12+ months of delays before your family sees a dime. Probate is public, it’s slow, and it’s expensive – and a funded trust avoids it entirely.

Contested guardianship: $5,000-$10,000+ to start. No guardian nominated? Family members disagree about who should raise your children? Now there’s a contested hearing. Both sides hire attorneys. The court appoints a guardian ad litem. Your children wait in temporary care – or worse, in CPS protective custody – while adults argue about their future. Each side’s legal fees potentially come out of your estate.

Conservatorship and ongoing court oversight: $10,000-$15,000 per year. When minor children inherit significant assets without a trust, the court appoints a conservator to manage those assets under MCL 700.5423. Annual court accountings. Legal fees for each filing. Administrative costs. Every year until each child turns 18. If your youngest is 5, that’s 13 years – $130,000-$195,000 consumed by a process a trust eliminates.

Family litigation: $10,000-$30,000+. Disputed estates generate lawsuits. Siblings fight over assets. Family members challenge the will or fight over who controls the children’s money. Every dollar spent on conflict is a dollar subtracted from your children’s future.

The conservative total: $50,000-$100,000+. And that’s before you count lost or mismanaged assets, tax inefficiencies, and the intangible costs to your children’s stability.

“Every dollar a Michigan family spends on contested guardianship and conservatorship is a dollar that should have gone to their children’s education, their activities, their housing, and their future.”

The comparison:

With the plan:

• $2,500–$5,500 one time.
• Your chosen guardian raises your kids.
• Your temporary guardians have immediate authority from day one.
• Your trust controls when and how children receive their inheritance.
• No probate. No court oversight. No CPS involvement. Private, fast, and exactly how you designed it.

Without the plan:

• $50,000–$100,000+ and climbing.
• A judge picks the guardian.
• CPS may take initial custody.
• Your children get everything at 18 with no controls.
• Probate drags on for months.
• Conservatorship costs compound for years.
• Family members fight.
• Your children’s inheritance funds the legal system instead of their future.

The Three Most Expensive Excuses

Every family that ends up in the $100,000 scenario said one of these three things first.

Excuse #1: “We’re too young for estate planning.”

Accidents are a leading cause of death for adults ages 25-44. Car crashes, medical emergencies, unexpected diagnoses – none of them check your age before they happen. Youth doesn’t determine need. Having dependents who rely on you determines need.

A 30-year-old parent with a $300,000 life insurance policy and a toddler has exactly the same planning need as a 55-year-old with a $3 million estate. The stakes are identical: who raises your child, who takes immediate custody in an emergency, and who manages their money.

Excuse #2: “We don’t have enough assets to justify the cost.”

This excuse confuses estate planning with wealth management. For parents with minor children, estate planning is primarily about guardianship, custody, control, and protection – not net worth.

Most parents carry life insurance. A $500,000 term policy – common and affordable for young families – creates a $500,000 estate the moment you die. Without a trust, that $500,000 goes through probate, gets placed under court-supervised conservatorship, and is handed to your child in a lump sum at 18. With a trust, it’s managed by the trustee you chose, distributed on the schedule you set, and protected from creditors, divorce, and bad decisions.

You don’t need a large estate to need an estate plan. You need dependents.

Excuse #3: “We’ll get to it eventually.”

“Eventually” is the most expensive word in estate planning. Every day without a plan is a day your family is completely unprotected. There’s no partial credit. There’s no grace period. If something happens tomorrow, the plan you were going to create next month provides exactly zero protection for your children.

“In our experience serving Michigan families, the most common regret isn’t choosing the wrong plan – it’s waiting too long to create one. The families who act today never regret it. The families who wait sometimes never get the chance.”

Why Pricing Transparency Matters – And Why Most Firms Avoid It

Here’s something that frustrates us about our industry: most law firms won’t tell you what estate planning costs until you’re already sitting in their office. They keep pricing vague on purpose – get you in the door, build rapport, then reveal the number when you’re already invested.

That approach keeps families from taking the first step. When you don’t know what something costs, it’s easy to assume it’s more than you can afford. It’s easy to put it off.

Boroja, Bernier & Associates publishes pricing because we believe Michigan families deserve to make informed decisions:

• Power of attorney packages: $1,000–$1,500

• Comprehensive will-based estate plans: $1,500–$2,500

• Comprehensive trust-based estate plans: $2,500–$5,500

The variation depends on complexity – number of children, types of assets, blended family considerations, special needs provisions, business ownership, number of parcels of real estate owned. We tell you where your plan falls within these ranges during your consultation, before you commit to anything.

Most law firms won’t tell you what estate planning costs. We think that’s part of the problem. When families know the real cost of planning versus the real cost of not planning, the decision makes itself.

Frequently Asked Questions About Estate Planning For Families With Minor Children

The Numbers Speak for Themselves

Estate planning isn’t complicated to understand. The math is straightforward. $4,500 today protects your family completely – guardianship nominations, temporary guardianship for immediate custody, a funded trust with age-based controls, incapacity planning, and every supporting document your family needs. $100,000+ tomorrow is the cost of hoping nothing goes wrong.

At Boroja, Bernier & Associates, we help Michigan families throughout the state turn that math into action. Our attorneys build comprehensive, integrated plans that protect children from every angle – not document packages that check boxes and leave families exposed. With offices in Shelby Township, Troy, Ann Arbor, and Lansing, we make it easy for families anywhere in Michigan to get this done.

You don’t need to be wealthy to need an estate plan. You need to be a parent.

To schedule a consultation with the Michigan estate planning attorneys at Boroja, Bernier & Associates, call (586) 991-7611.

$4,500 today. Or $100,000 and a courtroom tomorrow. Your children deserve better – and so do you.