Paying the Attorney
(Added 1/30/2009)
I was having a conversation with two professional advisors (an attorney and a CPA) and three gift planners on the subject of mailings. One gift planner presented his idea to address a letter to a 'filtered' group of donors who had indicated a desire to do an estate plan and to make bequests to certain charities. It was the gift planner's understanding that most of the donors in that filtered group did not implement plans for various reasons. Therefore, one advisor, the CPA, suggested that the charity include in the mailing wording to the extent saying, "If you have no personal attorney and no desire to visit an attorney's office, that for X-amount of dollars you can have a complete estate plan prepared by an attorney by mail."
The document preparation fee was significantly less than typical fees and the charity would use its gift planner to do the planning form to provide to the attorney. I have often thought of doing this but it just does not 'feel' clean. I know these people very well. I am confident the planner and the attorney would have the donors' best interests in mind with the paramount agenda of hoping the donor will remember the charity.
My sense is yours: no one is trying to do anything wrong here. In the situation you describe the issue is whether the charity ought to be involved with providing actual lines to a specific attorney.
Personally, I think that anyone who wants legal work performed should be adult enough to understand that he or she should go to an attorney. It's hard to believe that those in this group, filtered precisely for their interest in estate planning, would have such an aversion to seeing an attorney. If I needed an operation, you can bet I'd go to a doctor; and I'd expect the doctor to be paid.
Furthermore, the issue of whether the donor might avoid seeing an attorney in connection to creating an estate plan is absurd, and the charity should have no part of such a suggestion. And the idea of estate planning by mail doesn't sit right either. Even though a lot can be communicated through the mails (information by email, originals and copies of important documents by snail-mail), I'm still old school enough to think that the process of deciding what to do with one's estate - to whom it should be parceled out, at what intervals, and the like is far too important to cut out a competent and trained human being. I too would feel less than 'clean' if I were part of this plan.
Why not send the mailing to that group explaining the benefits of a bequest designation, with the suggested language to take to a qualified attorney (I'd be clear about what a 'qualified' attorney means)? If the person wants to do something and does not have an attorney (which is more common than a lot of people think), you might include a statement to the effect that you'd be glad to provide a list of three to five estate-planning attorneys in the donor's geographic area. I would go no further than that.