• Powers of Attorney may be the most important estate planning documents for many clients. With more people today grappling with diminished capacity, the assets of our clients' wealth may be under the control of an agent under a power of attorney for an extended period of time. It is important, therefore, that estate planning professionals ensure that each power of attorney is carefully designed to meet the client's individual purposes and that its acceptance by third parties is optimized.

• Prospective clients often have misunderstandings about estate planning and trust administration services. Among the most common are that their wealth and family dynamics warrant only a "simple" estate plan and that the services of knowledgeable, focused estate planning and trust administration professionals are not necessary. These beliefs may lead a prospective client to engage parties lacking necessary expertise or to create a do-it-yourself estate plan with inappropriate dispositive and fiduciary appointment provisions.

• Asset protection planning is important to a broad range of clients. With aggressive creditors and volatile financial situations in which some clients find themselves today, the relevance of asset protection and available asset protection mechanisms should be introduced to clients early in the estate planning process.

• Sustained success in an estate planning practice requires that we have a high degree of sensitivity to those situations in which we could owe potentially conflicting duties to multiple parties. If these issues are not identified and resolved early, conflicts of interest could unravel an engagement and result in ethics rules violations.