Capturing Asset and Family Information at Intake

Estate planning attorneys need two things before they can design a plan: who's in the family and what the person owns. Getting that information is where a lot of intake goes wrong. Ask too little and the attorney walks into the consult blind. Ask too much on the first call and the caller feels audited by someone they just met.

The fix is to split the job. Get the outline on the phone. Get the detail in a questionnaire before the consult. And never collect anything sensitive in a way that puts the caller at risk.

Three layers of information

Think about it in layers:

1. First call. Enough to confirm fit, gauge complexity and book the right consult. Five to ten minutes of questions, tops.
2. Pre-consult questionnaire. The fuller picture, filled in by the client at home with time to look things up.
3. Consult and engagement. Exact values, account details and specific wishes. The attorney's team handles this.

Most problems come from mixing up the first two.

Family questions for the first call

Keep it conversational. You're sketching, not drawing to scale.

• "Is the plan for you alone, or you and a spouse or partner?"
• "Are you married? Is it a first marriage for both of you?"
• "Do you have children? How many, and are any under 18?"
• "Any children from a previous relationship, yours or your spouse's?"
• "Any grandchildren you'd want to include?"
• "Is there anyone you'd want to provide for in a special way, like someone with a disability or someone who might need help managing money?"
• "Is there anyone you're thinking of leaving out?"

That last question can feel awkward. Ask it plainly and move on. The attorney needs to know.

What to skip on the first call: full names and birth dates for every family member. That belongs in the questionnaire.

Asset questions for the first call

Tell the caller why you're asking before you start.

"I'm going to ask a few general questions about what you own. Ballparks are fine, and you can skip anything you'd rather go over with the attorney."

Then:

• "Do you own your home? Any other real estate, including property in another state?"
• "Do you have retirement accounts, like a 401(k) or IRA?"
• "Do you have life insurance?"
• "Do you own a business, or part of one?"
• "Anything else of significant value, like investment accounts or land?"
• "Roughly, which of these ranges would your total estate fall in?" (Use your firm's ranges.)

You're not asking for balances. You're asking which categories exist. Out-of-state real estate, business ownership and a larger estate are the three items attorneys most often want flagged early.

Ask how things are owned, lightly

How an asset is titled and who's named as beneficiary can matter as much as what it's worth. Retirement accounts and life insurance generally pass by beneficiary designation, and jointly owned property may pass to the surviving owner. On the first call, a couple of light questions help:

• "Is your home in your name, or owned jointly with someone?"
• "Do you know who's listed as beneficiary on your retirement accounts or life insurance?"

Plenty of callers won't know. That's fine. Note "unsure" and move on. Don't explain what the answer means for their plan.

What goes in the questionnaire

After the consult is booked, send a pre-consult questionnaire. Text a link if your firm uses an online form, or email a PDF. A good one covers:

Personal

• Full legal names, birth dates, addresses and contact details for the client and spouse.
• Prior marriages and how they ended.

Family

• Children and grandchildren, with names, ages and where they live.
• Special circumstances, like a disability, public benefits, addiction, estrangement or a child going through a divorce.

People in key roles

• Who they're considering as executor, trustee, guardian for minor children, financial agent and health care agent. Include backups.

Assets

• Real estate: address, how it's titled, rough value.
• Bank and investment accounts: institution, type and rough value. No account numbers.
• Retirement accounts and life insurance: type, rough value, current beneficiaries if known.
• Business interests.
• Vehicles and valuable personal property.
• Debts, including mortgages and loans.

Existing documents

• Any current will, trust, powers of attorney or health care directives, with the date and state they were signed.

Goals

• One open question: "What matters most to you about this plan?"

Keep it as short as your attorneys can live with. A 20-page form nobody finishes is worse than a 4-page form everyone does.

What not to collect by phone

Set a firm rule and make sure everyone who answers the phone follows it:

• No full Social Security numbers.
• No full account numbers.
• No online banking passwords or PINs, ever.
• No birth dates for the whole family on the first call.

If a caller starts reading off account numbers, stop them kindly:

"You don't need to give me that today. The attorney's team will go over the details with you securely."

The less sensitive data you collect early, the less you have to protect.

Make the questionnaire easy to finish

Plenty of clients don't complete pre-consult forms. A few things help:

• Send it right after booking, while they're still motivated.
• Tell them on the call that it's coming and that rough numbers are fine.
• Send a reminder a couple of days before the consult.
• Say clearly that partial beats nothing: "Fill in what you can and bring the rest."

If it isn't done, don't cancel the consult. Have the attorney or paralegal walk through it at the start.

The intake note

After the first call, the attorney should see a short summary like this:

1. Plan for: individual or couple.
2. Marital history and children, including minors, a blended family and any special circumstances.
3. Real estate, with out-of-state property noted.
4. Business interests.
5. Retirement accounts, life insurance and other major asset types.
6. Estate size range.
7. Existing documents.
8. Goals, in the caller's words.

That's enough for the attorney to prepare, and it took the caller ten minutes. The full call flow is in our estate planning intake script. If you're thinking about how these answers help sort leads, see qualifying wills vs. trusts leads.

Where IntakeGenius fits

The IntakeGenius AI voice agent asks your first-call family and asset questions at the level of detail your attorneys choose, then books the consult. The answers go straight into IntakeCRM, and your team can text the questionnaire link from the same place. If you'd like to see it set up for your estate planning practice, let's do a 15-minute call. No slides.