Mike Haslam’s Story: How I Became an Estate Attorney
If you have been following our blog, you may be wondering, “Who are these people?” Well, whether or not you have been wondering that, we are going to tell you our stories. We are Mike Haslam and Nathan Croxford, and we are estate planning attorneys at our law firm, Voyant Legal. We want you to know who we are and why we decided to create Voyant Legal, our podcast Legacy Lawyers, and this blog. This is Mike’s story.
Little Mike Haslam, An Estate Planning Attorney in the Makin
When young Mike Haslam was in the fourth grade, he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. Of course he answered “an estate attorney” because what bright young fourth-grader wants to be anything else?
Ok, we admit that Mike didn’t even know what estate planning was in his younger years. Mike’s mother was a nurse for her entire career, and spent a large part of that time working in home health and hospice. Mike knew he wanted to help people, and his exposure to the world of nursing and hospice would later shape his decision to become an estate planning lawyer.
Deciding to Become a Lawyer, then Starting A Business As Well…
By his junior year of undergraduate school, Mike had decided he was going into law school. During his second year of law school, he did something that is not very main-stream for the typical law student: he started a home health and hospice business. This took a long time to get up and running, as home health and hospice is a heavily regulated industry, but it was ready to go by the end of law school.
He graduated cum laude from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, where he also obtained a MBA with an emphasis in entrepreneurship and innovation. After graduation, Mike ran his new business while studying for and then passing the bar exam.
Spread Thin: Practicing Law and Running A Hospice Business
Over the next few years, Mike was spread thin as he practiced law part time while running the home health and hospice business. During this time, he noticed a recurring pattern emerging: As his hospice patients neared the end of their lives, there were a lot of legal questions up in the air for their families. Many of these were brought to him, because his staff and clients all knew he was also a practicing lawyer.
Estate Planning Gone Awry
One case he handled while working both in hospice and law was particularly memorable, and not in a good way. In this case, his client was being sued by her sister. His client was the trustee of her father’s estate and had tried to execute his wishes to the best of her abilities. His trust was outdated by nearly 25 years. This case ended pretty badly for everyone.
When all was said and done, my client was ordered to pay only $20,000 to her siblings, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands they expected. This may not seem to be that much money, however this is a very narrow view of the costs of this law suite on the family. The estate was worth around $500,000. The attorney fees cost over $100,000. The proceedings took a total of 4 years to come to a full resolution. By the end, both Mike’s client and her sister were suffering major health issues they believed to be related to the stress this process placed them under. In short, it’s really impossible to calculate the true costs of vague, outdated, or even non-existent estate planning.
From Home Health to Voyant Legal
Knowing that he could not keep one foot in each venture forever, Mike eventually decided to leave the home health arena for full time law practice. He had his business partner buy him out, and shifted over to practicing law. But not just any law. Mike Haslam had found his calling in life: helping people avoid the catastrophic consequences of bad estate planning.
To listen to our full podcast about Mike’s Story, click here.