Lisa Haster
I Began as a Litigator
I did not begin my legal career planning to become an estate planning and elder law attorney.
I began as a litigator.
For years, I worked in an adversarial world built around conflict, deadlines, depositions, hearings, and disputes. I was successful at it, but over time I became burned out. More importantly, I realized I was no longer finding the kind of fulfillment I wanted from practicing law.
Then life changed my perspective entirely.
When It Became Personal
Within a relatively short period of time, I found myself navigating the unexpected deaths of people far too young to die—my brother and my best friend, both in their mid-30s, and a close friend and business mentor who died unexpectedly in his late 40s.
Suddenly, estate administration was not something I was studying in a statute book or handling from the safe distance of an attorney’s office. It was personal.
I saw firsthand how difficult it can be for grieving families to simply gain access to accounts, determine what someone owned, deal with creditors, transfer property, and figure out what happens next when there is little or no estate planning in place.
When someone dies unexpectedly, families are already overwhelmed. Adding courts, legal procedures, inaccessible assets, missing documents, and unanswered financial questions can make an incredibly difficult time even harder.
Another Side of Planning
At the same time, my family was facing another side of estate and long-term care planning.
My father developed Alzheimer’s disease and eventually required nursing home care. Helping my own parents navigate long-term care needs gave me an entirely different understanding of what families experience when aging, incapacity, health care decisions, finances, and asset protection all collide.
I learned that estate planning is not really about documents.
It is about what happens to the people you love when something happens to you.
What Planning Is Really About
It is about:
- Whether someone can step in and manage your finances if you become incapacitated.
- Whether your family knows what you wanted.
- Whether assets can be accessed without unnecessary delay.
- Whether a surviving spouse is financially secure.
- Whether a child is protected.
- Whether long-term care costs have been considered before a crisis occurs.
And sometimes, it is simply about making an already painful situation a little less difficult for the people left behind.
A New Direction
Those experiences changed the direction of my career.
I moved away from litigation and toward estate planning, probate, elder law, asset protection, and legacy planning because I realized I could use my legal experience to help families prevent many of the problems I had personally watched unfold.
Today, my goal is not simply to prepare trusts and legal documents.
My job is to help clients think through the “what ifs” before they become emergencies.
I want my clients to understand their plans, feel confident in the decisions they are making, and know that the people they love will have a clear path forward when the time comes.
That is why I do what I do.
I have been the lawyer helping a family through a difficult situation.
But I have also been the daughter, the sister, and the friend standing on the other side of the desk.
And that perspective influences every plan I create.
— Lisa Haster, Esq.