Beware Prices at Cholewka Law
I made an appointment with Cholewka Law in Gilbert to draw up a Will for my husband I with the intention of completing a Trust next year. The one hour consultation fee was $350 but would be waived if you proceeded with the Will THAT DAY. I pressed them more on what the average cost of the Will would be and was blown away when they replied "it is difficult to give you an exact total but for the most part our will plans are around $3300 which includes your deed and POA'S (health care and mental health care, financial). Trust plans start at an additional $3500--minor changes included during the first year and after that are charged at our hourly rate of $350." I understand there could be some estates that are more complicated than others but I re-iterated that my husband and I have 3 grown children, one house and a completed inventory of investment accounts and it should be simple. I thought the price was outrageous so I cancelled the appointment and bought Willmaker Software from Quicken for $50 and after less than 3 hours we now each have a Will that even includes trustee(s), gifts to children and charity, guardianship of our Pet as well as Power of Attorney documents all notarized for an extra $20. We still plan to complete a Trust next year and would expect to pay at least $2000 but I am disappointed with Cholewka Law as I had intentionally looked for a local family owned business to build a relationship for our future needs. What was even more ironic was the office managers Title was "Director of First Impressions" but instead of gaining us as a long term client we cancelled our appointment and instead of singing their praises to our entire neighborhood of 1200 homes who regularly ask each other for referrals on our community facebook page we shouted a big BEWARE to our neighbors and now the entire Yelp community as well. Please do your homework and make sure you are not overspending at a law office that wants you to think you cannot risk doing these documents without expensive legal advice. These documents are important but they are far from impossible to do yourself or do affordably.