What Is An Estate Planning Council?
An Estate Planning Council is a professional group of members drawn from various fields, including lawyers, banking and trust officials, funeral providers, CPA, insurance agents, and appraisers, all of whom have something to offer on the various aspects of estate planning. Almost every metropolitan area in the US has an estate planning council, and the goal of each is to allow its members to improve their own understanding of the entire estate planning process by developing professional relationships with the members qualified in other areas. One of the main functions of an estate planning council is hold regular events at which its members can both network and hear from various experts who keep them current on any new estate planning strategies or to shed light on older ones. Many estate planning councils have websites on which the public can access the council members for information concerning wills, and other estate planning strategies, presented in an accurate and unbiased manner. The estate planning councils also make their members available as speakers.
Some estate planning councils offer educational programs which actually count as continuing education credits for bankers, attorneys, CPAs and CFPs, and insurance agents, making these classes valuable career advancement tools. Most of them also offer purely social events, like annual breakfasts or periodic luncheons so that their members can simply mingle and get to know one another. Estate planning councils, for all the benefits they may offer the public, are first and foremost ways for those professionally involved in the profession to build connections, in a sense, "branding" themselves. The National Association of Estate Planning Councils is an umbrella organization offering benefits both to oits immediate members and the members of the local estate planning councils which join. The benefits include such things as discounts on newsletter subscriptions and legal journals devoted to estate-related topics, tutorials on how to present and "sell" themselves. The NAEPC website at www.naecp.org provides links to recent audio interviews and articles on a variety of estate planning topics, and links to article n the latest issue of the "NAEPC Journal of Estate and Tax Planning." The Journal articles are available to the public for download. The NAEPC also offers two professional designations to those estate planning specialists with the required experience in their fields. Accredited Estate Planner designation is offered to CPAs. CFCs, CFPs, Chartered Life Underwrites, attorneys, and Certified Trust Advisors with the requsite experience who have successfully completed two graduate courses offered by the American College. The NAEPC also has an attorney managed branch which attorneys certification as Estate Planning Law Specialists. This is a very stringent program, and that estate planning attorneys who wish to qualify must have at least five years of practice during which they spent at least one-third of their time on estate planning. They also have to meet certain continuing education requirements in the field of estate planning, have recommendations from five colleagues outside of their firms, and pass a Thompson Prometrics administered exam covering all the area an to which an attorney in the estate planning field will usually be exposed. |
