Mike Collins: Hi! I am Attorney Mike Collins. Today, we are going to spend some time talking about a topic of interest and importance to every responsible adult; preparing an estate plan, not only to take care of your loved ones after you are gone, but also to address issues that may affect you while you are still here, because as you now are living longer, and with that increased longevity comes a prospect. Yeah, I may get to the point where I am going to need some help managing my affairs.

So we will cover the principle topics you need to be concerned about when you approach this task yourself. We will talk about probate, we'll talk about death taxes, we'll talk about family circumstances which affect nearly all of us, and of course we will talk about the revocable living trust, and then we'll wind up our conversation with a suggestion about some solutions that you might want to consider.

Before we get started, a couple of words about my own background. I am an Estate Planning Lawyer. I have been in practice over 45 years now. I have a law firm, The Collins Firm that does nothing but Estate Planning and Estate Administration. We've over 15,000 families as our clients.

I've lectured folks from University of California all over the country, been on television, radio show in Washington, DC and had over 200,000 people attend my seminars. What I'd like to do is try to give you the benefit of all that experience and let you know what you need to be thinking about and the issues you ought to be addressing as you approach your own personal estate planning. So, I think we are ready to begin. Let's roll up our sleeves and get started.