Estate Planning for Married Couples with Adult Children
This guide encapsulates the experience of 30 years and thousands of estate plans into the LifeCounsel® system. A method to help married couples create a plan for their future, that protects both their wealth and their relationships.
Through real‑life scenarios told in plain English, you’ll learn how to prepare for a productive meeting with your attorney, cut through legalese, and make decisions that ensure your legacy is fulfilled—exactly as you intend.
The book includes a fully developed walkthrough of a typical estate plan design process.
When you meet with your attorney, you’ll have already done the hard work of defining your goals.
Jesse F. Bifulco, Esq. is an attorney who focuses on estate planning, elder law, and strategies designed to preserve family wealth while reducing unnecessary conflict. His LifeCounsel guides help families navigate the practical and emotional realities of long-term planning with greater clarity and confidence.
LifeCounsel exists to educate, inform, and inspire — so you can make better decisions for your family and your future.
I’m Jesse Bifulco, a practicing attorney who once imagined the lawyer’s role as battling it out in the courtroom. Over time, I came to realize that what most families need is not a litigator — it’s a counselor. Not someone who wins arguments after they begin, but someone who helps prevent them in the first place.
That realization led me to focus exclusively on estate planning.
After helping thousands of families protect what truly matters — not only their assets, but their stories, relationships, and peace of mind — I’ve come to see estate planning differently. It is not simply planning for what happens after life. It is planning for life itself.
It’s not about the hereafter . . .
. . . it’s about the here and now.
Your life is the legacy your children will carry with them, and what you do today shapes that legacy. If you know you need an estate plan, and want more than a one-size, DIY internet download, this plan will help you get there.
Estate Planning for Married Couples with Adult Children
- Demystifies the tools of estate planning.
- Uncovers the common causes and effects of incomplete planning.
- Clarifies how it is the goals, strategies, and tactics . . . and not the legal documents . . . that guarantee your estate plan works as intended.
Estate Planning for Married Couples with Adult Children will prepare you to talk with your children, and your attorney, about exactly what you want, in language everyone understands.
The LifeCounsel Process
Estate planning isn’t filling out forms and assuming you’ve covered the bases. You need to have an end in mind. It matters whether that end is aging in place, supporting your son’s business venture, or helping the grandkids with college. The tools may look the same, but the resulting picture is very different.
Estate Planning for Married Couples with Adult Children helps you learn the options, assess your goals and then understand the tools used to design and execute your plan.
What You’ll Get
Stories that Resonate
Story‑driven lessons that reveal vulnerabilities and opportunities in typical family situations.
You may even see yourself inside one of the stories, while fictional, the scenarios are based on actual circumstances that impact families every day.
Each chapter begins with a story that heads toward an unpleasant outcome. The scenario is revisited throughout the book, as you are introduced to estate planning strategies and techniques, that course correct, to avert financial disasters and family disunity
Demystified the Tools of the Trade
Powers of Attorney, Irrevocable Trusts, Wills, Advance Directives . . . These terms can be intimidating when people think, “How do I know what I need?”
Well, throughout the book these terms are demystified, first, by being plainly defined and second, by being used in context.
Reintroducing these tools in the stories, as the means to fulfill a client’s goals, clearly illustrates the role they play in estate planning.
The Design Interview
I have often assured my clients, they don’t need to prepare for our meeting as if it was a test. I’d say, “You already know the answers. You just don’t know it yet.”
But learning from their hesitations, I have created in this book a complete cheat sheet!
In each section, categories of questions are laid out. I explain why an attorney will ask about these issues and how your answers impact the strategies your attorney will propose.
This chapter is the single best way to understand how this crucial communication is important to helping the estate planning lawyer understand your goals.
Course Correcting Incomplete Plans
Estate plans aren’t one-size-fits-all— they vary from family to family and state to state. That’s why it’s so important to speak with an experienced estate planning and elder law attorney licensed in your state.
Whether you already have some pieces in place, or none at all, this book can help you clarify your goals. Your attorney can then put your plan into the right framework, tailored to your family, your assets, and your future—not someone else’s.
Order Your Copy Now!
Also, check out other LifeCounsel resources.
Check out LifeCast
Are you unknowingly sabotaging your family’s financial future? In this episode of the podcast, Attorney Jesse Bifulco, founder of LifeCounsel®, reveals the five most common mistakes people make when planning their estates—and the devastating consequences that can follow. From outdated beneficiary designations to DIY disasters, Jesse shares real-life stories (including Jake’s tragic tale) that show how easily things can go wrong—and how you can avoid them.
Check out LifeCounsel Substack
There are some conversations we’d all rather avoid. Like talking to our parents about whether they should still be driving—or about their estate plan. But as uncomfortable as these subjects might be, they’re crucial.
Talking with your aging parents—or your adult children—about estate planning doesn’t have to be morbid. In fact, it can be one of the most loving things you do.
Information provided for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice, or create an attorney-client relationship.
For personalized guidance, please consult a licensed attorney or financial advisor..