About Starsia Law.
About Starsia Law.
Hi, we’re Pam and Joe Starsia, the attorneys at Starsia Law. We are a family-owned law firm, specializing in estate planning and family business planning. Our mission is to make estate planning as stress-free and meaningful as possible. Because we know that estate planning is about so much more than just a set of legal documents…
• It’s making the best possible legal and financial decisions for your loved ones.
• It’s aligning your legal plan to fit your family’s unique goals, values, and priorities.
• It’s protecting your loved ones from unnecessary stress, costs, court, and conflict after you’re gone.
• It’s making sure your family has a trusted advisor to turn to when they need us.
• It’s planning for a life of prosperity, and the legacy you want to leave behind.
As your Personal Family Lawyers,® we’re here to help you take your next steps towards peace of mind. We hope you’ll find the resources on this site useful. If you have any questions or you’re ready to start your estate planning journey, we hope you’ll schedule a time to talk. Our family would love to get to know your family!
We couldn’t find an Estate Planning law firm that would take care of our own family the way we wanted. So we built it ourselves.
Pam founded Starsia Law in 2020, after realizing how the traditional, transactional style of estate planning that most lawyers were still using failed most families. For most people, just getting a stack of “one-size-fits-most” legal documents won’t take care of your loved ones the way you would want. This outdated traditional model almost always leaves a mess for your loved ones to sort out after you die, or if you become incapacitated, resulting in unnecessary stress, confusion, court, or family conflict for the people you love.
One day, Pam’s own parents asked her to review a set of legal documents (a Will, Power of Attorney, Healthcare Proxy, and Living Will) that a traditional estate planning attorney had prepared for them. She realized that, unless she did something about it, her own family would end up with exactly this kind of mess on their hands when something happened to her parents. So she created Starsia Law.
After seeing how the traditional process fails to protect most families, we’ve developed an innovative, outcome-driven estate planning process to help you take care of your family the way you want, and the way they deserve. We have systems and processes in place that make it as easy as possible for you to make things as easy as possible for your loved ones after you die, or if you become incapacitated. Our process is based on the proven Personal Family Lawyer® system, which has served thousands of families across the United States, keeping them out of court and out of conflict after the death of a loved one. We promise to deliver the counsel you need, the legal planning you want, and a relationship you can trust, at a transparent price you can afford.
We offer three levels of comprehensive, personalized estate planning to meet your unique goals, assets, family dynamics. From starter plans for young families or single folks, to more complex plans that involve strategies for asset protection, multi-generational family wealth preservation, or advanced tax planning, we’ve got you covered.
We’re different from other law firms. And we’re proud of that.
Here are few of the ways you can expect working with us to be different:
1. No hourly billing. All of our fees are fixed, flat fees, that you agree to in advance, in writing. There will never any billing surprises. At your initial Life & Legacy Planning Session, you will choose the level of planning and fee package that works best for your family and your budget. We are transparent and up front about our fees, and we have developed our process to help you choose the most affordable fee package that will achieve your estate planning goals.
2. Your family’s trusted advisor for life. We don’t just prepare a set of legal documents for you and send you on your way. We get to know you and your family, educate you about the law, and help you make the best possible legal and financial decisions over the course of your lifetime. Our flat-fee model encourages you to keep us up to date about changes in your family, your life, and your assets, and to ask us your questions when you need to. You’ll never have to worry about getting a surprise bill in the mail because you called to ask a question.
3. We proactively keep your plan up to date. Throughout your life, things will change: your assets , your health, your family, your goals, and your priorities will change—and the laws will definitely change. To make sure your plan stays up to date with those changes, we proactively contact you to schedule a full review of your plan at least every 3 years, at no additional charge.
4. We make sure your planning actually gets done (correctly). Estate planning is something that we all tend to procrastinate on. Every step of our estate planning process is designed to overcome that natural tendency towards procrastination. We have systems and policies in place to make the process less overwhelming, and to lovingly make sure your planning actually gets done, and so you can trust that your family will be taken care of in the way you want them to be.
5. We make sure all your assets are titled in the correct way, and your beneficiary designations are filled out correctly. After you sign your legal documents, there will be additional forms or papers that need to be filled out to make sure your plan actually works—such as forms at the bank to update the beneficiaries on your accounts. We have a process and systems in place to help you make sure that these forms all get filled out correctly, and that they are kept up to date over your lifetime. We make sure nothing is overlooked, so your plan will actually work the way you want it to for your loved ones.
6. We do one thing, and we do it well. We’ve been trained and credentialed as a Personal Family Lawyer® and Family Business Lawyer™ law firm to help you plan for your legal and financial life, your death and possible incapacity, and your legacy. This is our sole focus as a law firm. We have specialized training, expertise, and depth of experience in life and legacy planning that most other law firms simply can’t match. If you have minor children, we help you ensure that they would never be raised by anyone you wouldn’t want or taken into the care of strangers, and that they would receive your assets in the way that you would want if anything ever happened to you. If you have adult children or beneficiaries, we help you craft your estate plan to ensure that they will receive any inheritance from you in the easiest, least stressful way possible, to keep them out of court and out of conflict. If you own a business, we help you to protect and grow your business during your lifetime, and to plan for the eventual exit from, sale, or succession of your business.
7. We help you understand all your options. We never make assumptions about what type of planning you want based on your financial assets or your family dynamics. We help you understand the costs and benefits of various planning tools—such as Wills, Revocable Trusts, and Asset Protection Trusts for your beneficiaries—and then we help you make the best choices for your family, based on what’s important to you. While traditional lawyers have historically only offered some of these planning strategies only to extremely wealthy clients, our systems and our expertise enable us to make these same strategies much more cost-efficient and accessible for all our clients. We will provide you with the education about the law that you need to understand all your options, and then help you to make informed, empowered planning decisions.
8. We believe in the power of Legacy Planning. We believe that life and legacy planning is about much more than just transferring your financial wealth. As part of all our estate plans, we help you record a series of Generational Story videos (both in our office and on your own) over time, to help you preserve and pass on the assets your loved ones will cherish most—your intellectual, spiritual, and human assets, your wisdom, your stories, and your thoughts about who you are and what’s important to you.
Heart-centered, relationship-oriented legal advisors.