For Financial Advisors, CPAs, and Trusted Professionals

Every advisor has the same short list. The client whose beneficiary form still names an ex-spouse. The widow whose accounts are frozen because no one could find the trust. The couple who keep promising that this is the year.

Both of our attorneys, Jeanette Mora and Beth K. Roland, are Board Certified in elder law by the Florida Bar, a credential fewer than one percent of Florida attorneys hold.

Why a former financial planner built the practice this way

Jeanette spent more than twenty years in financial planning before law school, and she is active in the Financial Planning Association of Central Florida and the Central Florida Estate Planning Council. She knows what it is like to send a client to a lawyer and get back documents that never mention how the accounts are titled.

• We ask for the ownership picture before we draft. How each asset is titled drives the design. Without it, a plan is a guess.
• We treat funding as part of the job. An unfunded trust is the most expensive document in Florida, and the failure we see most often.

How the engagement runs, start to finish

1. 1Introduction. You identify a client who may benefit from our guidance, obtain their permission to make an introduction, and connect us by email or other appropriate means. From there, we make it easy for the client to take the next step. Alternatively, with your client's permission, send us their name, number, and a sentence about the concern. If the client has asked to hear from us, our team will reach out to help them take the next step.
2. 2Welcome and questionnaire. A short questionnaire on family, assets, titling, and beneficiaries goes out before the meeting.
3. 3First meeting. The 30-minute phone consultation is free. Meetings can be at the office, by phone, or by video, in English or Spanish. Spouses together, adult children welcome, you too.
4. 4Recommendations and fees. Before the client leaves, they know what we recommend and what it costs.
5. 5Engagement letter. Signed at the meeting or taken home. No one decides on the spot.
6. 6Drafting. Documents go home to be read, then we talk them through before anything is final.
7. 7The signing meeting, deliberately unhurried. Witnesses and a notary meet Florida's requirements, and we read the plan back in plain words first.
8. 8Funding. Deeds recorded, accounts retitled, beneficiaries corrected, and clear instructions for the accounts you hold.
9. 9Ongoing reviews. A death, a divorce, a diagnosis, or a move out of state changes the answer.

Where your relationship with the client stands

• We do not manage money. No assets under management, no insurance sales, no securities licenses.
• No referral fees, in either direction. Florida's rules of professional conduct prohibit sharing legal fees with a nonlawyer.
• You stay informed. With the client's written authorization, you get the plan summary and the funding instructions.
• We tell you what the trust needs to say so the paperwork clears your custodian the first time.
• We send the client back to you. Financial questions are yours, and we say so out loud.

Medicaid and special needs referrals: early is the whole game

Florida looks back sixty months at transfers when someone applies for long-term care Medicaid, and gifts inside that window can create a penalty period during which Medicaid pays nothing. Crisis planning after a parent enters a facility is still possible, but the options narrow. See our Florida Medicaid look-back guide.

When an inheritance or settlement is paid directly to someone receiving SSI or Medicaid, it can disqualify them from those benefits until the funds are spent down. If the parents plan ahead in their own estate documents, a third-party special needs trust avoids this problem at relatively low cost. Once the money has already been received, however, the remedy shifts to a first-party trust, one that carries a Medicaid payback requirement.

Two related points are worth flagging. First, when a young adult with a developmental disability turns eighteen, a guardian advocacy under Fla. Stat. § 393.12 may be the better fit rather than a full guardianship. Second, as of January 1, 2026, ABLE accounts are now available to individuals whose disability onset occurred before age 46, an expansion from the prior age limit. Finally, as capacity begins to decline, it is the durable power of attorney that determines whether the situation can be managed privately or must go before a court.

What to send us with a referral

• If given permission by the client, name, best phone number, and preferred language
• What prompted the call, and any deadline
• Whether documents already exist, and roughly when they were signed
• What they own, how it is titled, and who is named as beneficiary
• Marital history, including children from a prior relationship
• Anyone receiving SSI, Medicaid, VA, or other needs-based benefits
• Whether capacity is a question, and who handles the finances now
• Written authorization to speak with you, and whether you want to attend the first meeting