Trusts and Estates Cold-Start Interview

Purpose

Conduct a structured, staged interview with a trusts-and-estates practice group — led by a supervising attorney or authorized designee — to gather the information required to populate practice-profiles/trusts-estates.md. The skill walks through all eight profile fields in sequence, records every answer, and assembles a filled draft of the profile for the practice group's review and approval. It produces draft legal work product for attorney review — not legal advice and not a final configuration.

Use When

• A team is adopting AgentCounsel and needs to configure practice-profiles/trusts-estates.md for the first time.
• A trusts-and-estates practice group is being onboarded to the library and no current profile exists.
• The library is being stood up for the first time and the trusts-and-estates area is included in scope.
• A practice group wishes to revisit or rebuild its profile from scratch rather than make incremental updates.

Required Inputs

• A knowledgeable person from the trusts-and-estates practice group — a supervising attorney or an authorized designee — who can answer questions about the group's jurisdiction, positions, escalation rules, and review requirements.
• Any existing playbooks, templates, source-of-truth documents, or standard-form documents the group already uses, so they can be referenced or cited in the profile.

Do Not Use When

• The group is actively working a live trusts-and-estates matter. This skill configures the library; it does not support an open matter.
• A practice-profiles/trusts-estates.md already exists and is current. In that case this is a refresh, not a cold start — though the skill may still be used to rebuild the profile deliberately.
• No authorized person is available to answer. Do not complete the interview with guessed or inferred answers; record all gaps as [CONFIRM: ...] placeholders.
• The purpose is to handle a specific trusts-and-estates matter (use the appropriate matter-level skill for that task).

Legal Safety Rules

• Produce draft legal work product for attorney review. This is not legal advice.
• Never guess or infer an answer to any interview question. If the interviewee cannot answer a question, record [CONFIRM: answer required from practice group] and move on.
• The filled profile is a draft. It must be reviewed and explicitly approved by the supervising attorney or practice group before it governs any AgentCounsel work product.
• Do not invent standard positions, clause preferences, escalation thresholds, or review rules. Record only what the interviewee provides.
• Do not include client-specific facts, client names, matter identifiers, or privileged details in the profile. The profile is a reusable group-level configuration, not a matter record.
• Do not state or imply that any threshold, position, or rule in the profile satisfies a legal requirement under any jurisdiction. Jurisdiction-specific legal obligations are for the attorney to verify.
• Flag every item the interviewee defers or leaves open with a visible [CONFIRM: ...] placeholder so the reviewer can see exactly what is unresolved.

Workflow

Stage 1 — Jurisdictions

Ask the interviewee:

• In which states or countries does the group regularly handle estate-planning and trust-administration matters?
• Are there situs questions the group routinely encounters — trust situs, real-property situs, multi-state property, foreign-property holdings?
• Does the group regularly handle non-resident-alien beneficiaries, international beneficiaries, or international estate-tax exposures?
• Are there jurisdictions the group treats as out of scope (e.g., specialized offshore jurisdictions), requiring specialist counsel?
• Does the group maintain jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction reference materials on estate, inheritance, GST, and gift-tax regimes?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: jurisdiction not yet specified].

Stage 2 — Client and Team Context

Ask the interviewee:

• What types of trusts-and-estates matters does the group handle most frequently — estate planning, trust administration, probate, contested matters, charitable structures?
• Are clients primarily ultra-high-net-worth, high-net-worth, general estate-planning, family offices, or institutional fiduciaries?
• How is the team structured — partners, associates, paralegals, trust officers, fiduciary administrators?
• How does the group coordinate with corporate fiduciaries, tax advisors, accountants, and investment advisors?
• Are there client categories — multi-generational families, blended families, special-needs beneficiaries, business-owning families — that require special handling?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: client/team context not yet specified].

Stage 3 — Escalation Thresholds

Ask the interviewee:

• Which matters automatically require escalation — contested matters, capacity questions, undue-influence concerns, tax-driven structures, charitable-structure design, international situs?
• Are there asset-value thresholds (total estate value, single-trust value, gift-tax-exposure value) that trigger escalation?
• When does a fiduciary-conflict question — including a question about the group's own duties — require immediate review?
• Which trust-administration events (significant distribution, modification, decanting, termination) require attorney review regardless of size?
• Who is the designated escalation contact for trusts-and-estates matters, and what is the expected turnaround?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: escalation threshold not yet specified].

Stage 4 — Preferred Output Style

Ask the interviewee:

• Should trusts-and-estates work product default to memo format, structured intake format, trust-administration tracker format, or document drafts?
• What level of detail does the practice group expect — executive summary, full reasoning, both layered?
• Are there house style rules for risk ratings, contested-matter flags, or open-items lists in trusts-and-estates work product?
• Does the group produce funding checklists, trust-administration calendars, or estate-administration timelines in a standard format?
• Are there particular deliverable types — estate-tax memos, fiduciary accounting reviews, trustee-decision memos — for which the group has mandatory format requirements?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: output style preference not yet specified].

Stage 5 — Source-of-Truth Documents

Ask the interviewee:

• What is the group's authoritative estate-planning intake instrument, and where is it stored?
• Is there a trust-administration playbook or calendar template, and how is it kept current?
• What document governs the group's standard testamentary-document library — wills, trusts, powers, healthcare directives?
• Are there sample-document libraries for non-standard structures (dynasty trusts, GRATs, ILITs, charitable trusts) the group treats as authoritative?
• Does the group maintain jurisdiction-specific reference materials for estate, gift, GST, and inheritance taxes?

Record answers and document names. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: source document not yet identified].

Stage 6 — Standard Positions and Playbooks

Ask the interviewee:

• What is the group's default capacity-assessment threshold, and how does it integrate medical or other evidence?
• What is the group's default revocable-trust posture — revocable trust as core estate-planning tool, or will-based planning with trusts as supplements?
• What is the group's default position on powers of appointment, decanting, and trust-modification mechanisms?
• What is the group's default portability election posture?
• What is the group's default approach to charitable structures (private foundations, donor-advised funds, charitable trusts)?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: standard position not yet specified].

Stage 7 — Attorney Review Requirements

Ask the interviewee:

• At what stage does attorney review of estate-planning work product become mandatory — initial intake, draft document, signing, post-signing?
• Are there work-product types for which attorney review is always required regardless of size — any will, any trust agreement, any tax election, any contested-matter filing, any fiduciary-conflict memo?
• What is the designated reviewer's role — handling attorney, supervising partner, designated fiduciary attorney?
• What is the expected turnaround for standard document review, and how are urgent reviews (terminal-illness drafting, deadline-driven elections) handled?
• Is there a formal sign-off step before a document is finalized, an election is filed, or a trustee decision is communicated?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: review requirement not yet specified].

Stage 8 — Prohibited Assumptions

Ask the interviewee:

• Are there facts agents must never assume without explicit confirmation — that capacity is intact, that no undue influence applies, that an estate is non-taxable, that a trust is properly funded, that a beneficiary designation is current?
• Are there trusts-and-estates risks — capacity, undue influence, fiduciary breach, fraudulent transfer, tax-driven recharacterization — where an agent must stop and escalate rather than reason through independently?
• Are there matter types where agents must never proceed beyond intake without direct attorney involvement — contested matters, will contests, trust contests, fiduciary-conflict matters?
• Are there prior incidents — adverse judgments, fiduciary findings, malpractice claims — that should be encoded as explicit prohibitions for agents working on trusts-and-estates matters?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: prohibited assumption not yet specified].

Stage 9 — Assemble the Draft Profile

Compile all answers into a filled draft of practice-profiles/trusts-estates.md, populating each of the eight profile sections. For every item that was not answered, insert a visible [CONFIRM: ...] placeholder with enough context for the reviewer to understand what needs to be supplied. Append a list of all open placeholders so the reviewing attorney can see at a glance what remains unresolved.

Output Format

Deliver:

1. Filled draft of practice-profiles/trusts-estates.md — all eight sections populated with answers from the interview. Every unanswered item is a visible [CONFIRM: ...] placeholder.
2. Open-items list — an explicit enumeration of every placeholder inserted, with the stage and question it corresponds to, so the reviewing attorney can resolve them efficiently.

Label the entire output: Draft legal work product for attorney review. Not legal advice. This profile draft must be reviewed and approved by the supervising attorney or practice group before it is relied upon.

Attorney Verification Checklist

• [ ] All eight profile sections have been reviewed by a supervising attorney or authorized practice-group representative.
• [ ] Jurisdiction coverage — including situs and multi-state property — is accurately recorded [verify jurisdiction].
• [ ] Capacity-assessment threshold reflects the group's current considered posture, not a provisional one.
• [ ] Tax-driven structures and elections are tied to current authority [Verify current law] and all related deadlines are marked [deadline verification required].
• [ ] Fiduciary-conflict protocols are accurately recorded and consistent with applicable professional-responsibility rules.
• [ ] Confidentiality posture protects beneficiary information at the appropriate level.
• [ ] No client-specific facts, matter identifiers, or privileged details appear in the profile.
• [ ] All [CONFIRM: ...] placeholders have been resolved or explicitly accepted as pending.
• [ ] The approved profile has been saved to practice-profiles/trusts-estates.md and its effective date recorded.
• [ ] A process for periodic profile review and update has been identified.

Full raw SKILL.md

---
name: Trusts and Estates Cold-Start Interview
description: "Use when a trusts-and-estates practice group is adopting AgentCounsel and needs to configure its practice profile by answering a structured interview covering jurisdictions, client context, escalation thresholds, output preferences, source documents, standard positions, review requirements, and prohibited assumptions."
practice_area: setup
task_type: interview
jurisdictions: []
risk_level: low
requires_attorney_review: true
inputs:
  - "Access to a trusts-and-estates attorney or authorized designee"
  - "The practice group's jurisdictions and client context"
  - "Standard positions, escalation thresholds, and review requirements"
outputs:
  - "Filled trusts-and-estates practice profile draft for attorney review"
related_skills:
  - skills/trusts-estates/estate-planning-intake/SKILL.md
  - skills/trusts-estates/post-death-administration-task-tracker/SKILL.md
  - skills/trusts-estates/trust-administration-tracker/SKILL.md
tags:
  - setup
  - cold-start
  - practice-profile
  - configuration
  - trusts-estates
---

# Trusts and Estates Cold-Start Interview

## Purpose

Conduct a structured, staged interview with a trusts-and-estates practice group — led by a supervising attorney or authorized designee — to gather the information required to populate `practice-profiles/trusts-estates.md`. The skill walks through all eight profile fields in sequence, records every answer, and assembles a filled draft of the profile for the practice group's review and approval. It produces draft legal work product for attorney review — not legal advice and not a final configuration.

## Use When

- A team is adopting AgentCounsel and needs to configure `practice-profiles/trusts-estates.md` for the first time.
- A trusts-and-estates practice group is being onboarded to the library and no current profile exists.
- The library is being stood up for the first time and the trusts-and-estates area is included in scope.
- A practice group wishes to revisit or rebuild its profile from scratch rather than make incremental updates.

## Required Inputs

- A knowledgeable person from the trusts-and-estates practice group — a supervising attorney or an authorized designee — who can answer questions about the group's jurisdiction, positions, escalation rules, and review requirements.
- Any existing playbooks, templates, source-of-truth documents, or standard-form documents the group already uses, so they can be referenced or cited in the profile.

## Do Not Use When

- The group is actively working a live trusts-and-estates matter. This skill configures the library; it does not support an open matter.
- A `practice-profiles/trusts-estates.md` already exists and is current. In that case this is a refresh, not a cold start — though the skill may still be used to rebuild the profile deliberately.
- No authorized person is available to answer. Do not complete the interview with guessed or inferred answers; record all gaps as `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholders.
- The purpose is to handle a specific trusts-and-estates matter (use the appropriate matter-level skill for that task).

## Legal Safety Rules

- Produce draft legal work product for attorney review. This is not legal advice.
- Never guess or infer an answer to any interview question. If the interviewee cannot answer a question, record `[CONFIRM: answer required from practice group]` and move on.
- The filled profile is a draft. It must be reviewed and explicitly approved by the supervising attorney or practice group before it governs any AgentCounsel work product.
- Do not invent standard positions, clause preferences, escalation thresholds, or review rules. Record only what the interviewee provides.
- Do not include client-specific facts, client names, matter identifiers, or privileged details in the profile. The profile is a reusable group-level configuration, not a matter record.
- Do not state or imply that any threshold, position, or rule in the profile satisfies a legal requirement under any jurisdiction. Jurisdiction-specific legal obligations are for the attorney to verify.
- Flag every item the interviewee defers or leaves open with a visible `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholder so the reviewer can see exactly what is unresolved.

## Workflow

**Stage 1 — Jurisdictions**

Ask the interviewee:
- In which states or countries does the group regularly handle estate-planning and trust-administration matters?
- Are there situs questions the group routinely encounters — trust situs, real-property situs, multi-state property, foreign-property holdings?
- Does the group regularly handle non-resident-alien beneficiaries, international beneficiaries, or international estate-tax exposures?
- Are there jurisdictions the group treats as out of scope (e.g., specialized offshore jurisdictions), requiring specialist counsel?
- Does the group maintain jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction reference materials on estate, inheritance, GST, and gift-tax regimes?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: jurisdiction not yet specified]`.

**Stage 2 — Client and Team Context**

Ask the interviewee:
- What types of trusts-and-estates matters does the group handle most frequently — estate planning, trust administration, probate, contested matters, charitable structures?
- Are clients primarily ultra-high-net-worth, high-net-worth, general estate-planning, family offices, or institutional fiduciaries?
- How is the team structured — partners, associates, paralegals, trust officers, fiduciary administrators?
- How does the group coordinate with corporate fiduciaries, tax advisors, accountants, and investment advisors?
- Are there client categories — multi-generational families, blended families, special-needs beneficiaries, business-owning families — that require special handling?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: client/team context not yet specified]`.

**Stage 3 — Escalation Thresholds**

Ask the interviewee:
- Which matters automatically require escalation — contested matters, capacity questions, undue-influence concerns, tax-driven structures, charitable-structure design, international situs?
- Are there asset-value thresholds (total estate value, single-trust value, gift-tax-exposure value) that trigger escalation?
- When does a fiduciary-conflict question — including a question about the group's own duties — require immediate review?
- Which trust-administration events (significant distribution, modification, decanting, termination) require attorney review regardless of size?
- Who is the designated escalation contact for trusts-and-estates matters, and what is the expected turnaround?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: escalation threshold not yet specified]`.

**Stage 4 — Preferred Output Style**

Ask the interviewee:
- Should trusts-and-estates work product default to memo format, structured intake format, trust-administration tracker format, or document drafts?
- What level of detail does the practice group expect — executive summary, full reasoning, both layered?
- Are there house style rules for risk ratings, contested-matter flags, or open-items lists in trusts-and-estates work product?
- Does the group produce funding checklists, trust-administration calendars, or estate-administration timelines in a standard format?
- Are there particular deliverable types — estate-tax memos, fiduciary accounting reviews, trustee-decision memos — for which the group has mandatory format requirements?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: output style preference not yet specified]`.

**Stage 5 — Source-of-Truth Documents**

Ask the interviewee:
- What is the group's authoritative estate-planning intake instrument, and where is it stored?
- Is there a trust-administration playbook or calendar template, and how is it kept current?
- What document governs the group's standard testamentary-document library — wills, trusts, powers, healthcare directives?
- Are there sample-document libraries for non-standard structures (dynasty trusts, GRATs, ILITs, charitable trusts) the group treats as authoritative?
- Does the group maintain jurisdiction-specific reference materials for estate, gift, GST, and inheritance taxes?

Record answers and document names. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: source document not yet identified]`.

**Stage 6 — Standard Positions and Playbooks**

Ask the interviewee:
- What is the group's default capacity-assessment threshold, and how does it integrate medical or other evidence?
- What is the group's default revocable-trust posture — revocable trust as core estate-planning tool, or will-based planning with trusts as supplements?
- What is the group's default position on powers of appointment, decanting, and trust-modification mechanisms?
- What is the group's default portability election posture?
- What is the group's default approach to charitable structures (private foundations, donor-advised funds, charitable trusts)?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: standard position not yet specified]`.

**Stage 7 — Attorney Review Requirements**

Ask the interviewee:
- At what stage does attorney review of estate-planning work product become mandatory — initial intake, draft document, signing, post-signing?
- Are there work-product types for which attorney review is always required regardless of size — any will, any trust agreement, any tax election, any contested-matter filing, any fiduciary-conflict memo?
- What is the designated reviewer's role — handling attorney, supervising partner, designated fiduciary attorney?
- What is the expected turnaround for standard document review, and how are urgent reviews (terminal-illness drafting, deadline-driven elections) handled?
- Is there a formal sign-off step before a document is finalized, an election is filed, or a trustee decision is communicated?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: review requirement not yet specified]`.

**Stage 8 — Prohibited Assumptions**

Ask the interviewee:
- Are there facts agents must never assume without explicit confirmation — that capacity is intact, that no undue influence applies, that an estate is non-taxable, that a trust is properly funded, that a beneficiary designation is current?
- Are there trusts-and-estates risks — capacity, undue influence, fiduciary breach, fraudulent transfer, tax-driven recharacterization — where an agent must stop and escalate rather than reason through independently?
- Are there matter types where agents must never proceed beyond intake without direct attorney involvement — contested matters, will contests, trust contests, fiduciary-conflict matters?
- Are there prior incidents — adverse judgments, fiduciary findings, malpractice claims — that should be encoded as explicit prohibitions for agents working on trusts-and-estates matters?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item `[CONFIRM: prohibited assumption not yet specified]`.

**Stage 9 — Assemble the Draft Profile**

Compile all answers into a filled draft of `practice-profiles/trusts-estates.md`, populating each of the eight profile sections. For every item that was not answered, insert a visible `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholder with enough context for the reviewer to understand what needs to be supplied. Append a list of all open placeholders so the reviewing attorney can see at a glance what remains unresolved.

## Output Format

Deliver:

1. **Filled draft of `practice-profiles/trusts-estates.md`** — all eight sections populated with answers from the interview. Every unanswered item is a visible `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholder.
2. **Open-items list** — an explicit enumeration of every placeholder inserted, with the stage and question it corresponds to, so the reviewing attorney can resolve them efficiently.

Label the entire output: **Draft legal work product for attorney review. Not legal advice. This profile draft must be reviewed and approved by the supervising attorney or practice group before it is relied upon.**

## Attorney Verification Checklist

- [ ] All eight profile sections have been reviewed by a supervising attorney or authorized practice-group representative.
- [ ] Jurisdiction coverage — including situs and multi-state property — is accurately recorded `[verify jurisdiction]`.
- [ ] Capacity-assessment threshold reflects the group's current considered posture, not a provisional one.
- [ ] Tax-driven structures and elections are tied to current authority `[Verify current law]` and all related deadlines are marked `[deadline verification required]`.
- [ ] Fiduciary-conflict protocols are accurately recorded and consistent with applicable professional-responsibility rules.
- [ ] Confidentiality posture protects beneficiary information at the appropriate level.
- [ ] No client-specific facts, matter identifiers, or privileged details appear in the profile.
- [ ] All `[CONFIRM: ...]` placeholders have been resolved or explicitly accepted as pending.
- [ ] The approved profile has been saved to `practice-profiles/trusts-estates.md` and its effective date recorded.
- [ ] A process for periodic profile review and update has been identified.