(Article from Cain & Cain Newsletter, December 2015)
This is the time of the year that Tammy, Mitch, Shelly and I pause to reflect on our past year and consider as a team what worked well in our formal maintenance and update program and what we would do differently next year. Looking back on 2015, our most popular and best attended Annual Client Meeting took place on a Saturday morning in early March at the Norman Regional Health System Education Center. It took place in the Auditorium which seats up to one hundred people and provides excellent audio and visual equipment. In addition, it provided more than adequate parking and disability access for our clients. We are pleased to announce that our friends at the Norman Regional Health System have agreed to let us use this excellent Community Educational Center again in 2016.
At our recent team planning session we discovered that our client family has grown to the point that we can now consider presenting “focused” Annual Client Meetings in 2016. What I mean by that is we now have enough clients that fall into one of three categories that we can customize the content of the presentation to be the most relevant to our audience. For example, in addition to all of the standard mutual exchanges of information and legal updates we do each year, we can set aside one of the meetings to talk about educational and counseling issues that are most relevant to married couples with minor children. Another meeting could address the unique issues facing surviving spouses and single members of our client family who have children, beneficiaries, and causes they support in their planning. Finally, we could prepare a meeting or two for married couples with adult children or beneficiaries that would focus on personal protections for surviving spouses, federal estate tax planning, and wealth reception techniques for their adult children and beneficiaries, as well as charitable planning and retirement planning integration.
The Annual Client Meeting is an extremely important part of our formal maintenance program and we want to make it relevant and effective for you and your loved ones. So when you get your registration packet in mid-January of 2016 reflect carefully on your prior commitment to attend an Annual Client Meeting when you joined our program. If you have been unable to attend for whatever reason in the past, don’t worry about it. It is a new year and we look forward to our reunion and chance to get your planning on track and up to date!
In addition, we will also be providing you with important information regarding our Client Update Program, which will be held next fall for those of you that are due to update your estate planning documents in 2016! Stay tuned for updates regarding specific dates and times for the 2016 Annual Client Meetings. In the meantime have a joyous, wonderful, holiday season and thank you for being part of our client family!
-Marty Cain