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The Estate Planning Clinic provides direct client representation on estate planning, probate, guardianship, conservatorship, debt counseling, and private insurance cases. The Clinic offers estate and permanency planning services to low- and middle-income individuals in our community, specializing in serving people living with chronic illness (including HIV/AIDS), persons with terminal illness, the disabled and the elderly. The Clinic helps clients maximize control over decision-making and secure their children’s future in the event of incapacity or death through the drafting of wills, trusts, powers of attorney, health care proxies, funeral planning directives, living wills, and relationship agreements. The Clinic also assists survivors and family members in probating the estates of deceased clients and obtaining guardianship and/pr conservatorship for loved ones where necessary and appropriate when proper advance planning has not been possible.
Student work in the Clinic involves extensive client interviewing and counseling, and often requires frequent communications and negotiations with medical providers, employers and their human resources departments, creditors and insurance companies. Students work closely with clients to develop comprehensive estate plans to address their personal priorities and long-term wishes, draft appropriate estate planning documents, analyze government and private insurance benefits, assess clients’ financial situations and when necessary provide debt counseling or provide referrals for bankruptcy services. Estate Planning Clinic guardianship, conservatorship and contested estate probate cases involve representing clients at hearings before state probate court judges.
For academic year 2012/2013, students wishing to work in this clinic must enroll in Access to Justice Clinical Seminar: Benefits Advocacy and Estate Planning for Persons with Disabilities, Veterans, and Families A (fall) or B (spring).
For more information on the Estate Planning Clinic, contact Director of the Estate Planning Clinic Tamara Kolz Griffin at tkolz@law.harvard.edu or (617) 390-2530.
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