Amanda N. Maurer Miller, PC
With over twenty years of experience on the Western Slope of Colorado, Amanda and her team are ready to assist you with estate planning, probate, business, and real estate matters. We want to get to know you, and learn about your family, business, and what is most important to you. We provide more than document drafting. We want to be your trusted advisor in life and legacy planning.
We have two office locations!
214 8th Street, #303, Glenwood Springs, CO 81601 and
3154 Lakeside Drive, #101, Grand Junction, CO 81506
Practice Areas
Estate Planning
Probate
Trust Administration
Real Estate
Business Formation
Business Succession Planning
Guardianship/Conservatorship
Estate Planning, Business Planning, Probate, Wills, Trusts and Real Estate Lawyer
About Amanda N. Maurer Miller, PC
Why We Practice Estate Planning Differently - Amanda's Story
On Friday afternoon, April 13, 2018, life changed in an instant. My children’s stepmother texted me that I needed to get to the local hospital emergency department immediately because my children’s father had been diagnosed with brain tumors. We were all in shock. He was 45 years old, a beloved physician himself. I asked, why does this have to happen to him? His response was why wouldn’t this happen to me? He had seen thousands of cases in his internal medicine career, many of which involved unexpected, tragic outcomes. I had those stories, too, from my work as a probate lawyer, but none had ever hit this close to home before. I picked our children up from school and their father and I, along with their two stepparents, told them the worst news we had ever had to relay.
A few days later, my children’s father texted me that he needed to update his estate plan documents. He had never gotten around to it after we had divorced almost five years earlier. He was riding home from a surgery consult and needed to get his affairs in order prior to undergoing major brain surgery. The surgery would confirm the type of cancer and hopefully buy him a few more months of life. After several text exchanges, I regretfully asked him if he could find another attorney to help him. He only had a few days prior to surgery, and I did not want to spend that time on my computer drafting documents and trying to coordinate a last-minute signing when I needed to be mothering our children. I was also weathering my own grief as I faced the reality of losing a life partner, then co-parent, that had been an integral part of my life for 23 years.
Fortunately, he did find an attorney to help him, and he established a revocable living trust. His assets were properly directed into the trust upon his death, and no estate administration case had to be filed with the court. Prior to experiencing this major family loss in May 2019 just 13 months after the initial diagnosis, I had always felt like probate was “not a big deal” in Colorado. As we all tried to adjust to our new reality, I was very grateful I would not have to receive probate notices on my children’s behalf in the mail, talk to attorneys potentially appointed on my minor children’s behalf, or otherwise deal with the court system on top of everything else. If my children’s father had died suddenly with old documents, his estate plan would have had to have been re-written per Colorado statute through a court process. Our children and their stepmother would have been dealing with attorneys and the court system for years.
A couple weeks after his death, I found out my children’s father had nominated me to take on certain responsibilities in his documents. I wished he would have told me during his lifetime so that we could have had at least one conversation to flesh out the two-dimensional written words. We talked or texted almost every day, yet he never mentioned this directly. I scoured old computer files and the internet to see if I could patch together a video for my children to watch and listen to their dad “in action,” as he always had a lot of bold opinions, theories, and things to say about the world. Although there are pictures, the live videos and recordings are few and far between. Our kids had just turned 12 and 14 when they lost their father. Having his words recorded on audio or video directed towards them would be priceless now.
Estate Planning, Business Planning, Probate, Wills, Trusts and Real Estate Legal Team
Meet the team
How We Practice Estate Planning Differently - The "Old" Way vs. OUR Way
Amanda has been practicing law in Colorado since 2001. Estate planning, trusts, and probate administration have been her main private practice areas since 2004. Initially, Amanda wanted to provide good documents at the most affordable price. “Selling documents” and keeping things as cheap as possible for the client did not allow for the level of counseling and support Amanda had always wanted to provide. She never liked sending invoices for “.2” of time after a phone call or email, but that's the standard practice in most law firms. Amanda was actively trying to implement new systems to provide the best client counseling, documents, and support in the spring of 2023 when she came across the Personal Family Lawyer network of lawyers. Amanda joined this nationwide community of lawyers because she believes in the shared goal to represent clients and their families in ways to keep them out of conflict and out of court, depending on their goals and priorities. It took years and an immediate loss for Amanda to fully realize not everyone has the goal of obtaining the simplest documents at the lowest possible cost. If that is the goal, online document drafting companies provide that service.
Now, our firm's estate planning process requires completion of pre-meeting “homework” to enable our clients to be more organized than ever before. Amanda spends the initial estate and legacy planning meeting understanding each client's unique needs, family situation, and objectives. Our clients choose the best plan for them after being fully educated on their options specific to their situation. We then work together to design our clients' plan at a flat-fee amount our clients choose after telling us what will work best for them and their family. Our clients can review summaries and drafts, then we meet to go over any specific questions and to sign the plan documents. During a third meeting, my team and I conduct a legacy interview to capture the intangible assets that are often lost when we lose a loved one. We deliver the final plan documents, along with the legacy interview and data files to our clients. Finally, we work with each client to notify fiduciaries of roles they may fill for our clients in the future. We also support our clients in titling assets appropriately to avoid court altogether if that is their goal. We then stay in touch with our clients and invite them to update their plans as life progresses. We share each client’s goal of wanting everything to be as easy as possible for loved ones in the event of our client’s incapacity or death.
If our approach to estate planning sounds like it will support you and your family, please contact us.