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ALTON - A local financial planner and attorney have partnered to offer a Wills & Trusts Lunch & Learn.
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At 12 p.m. on Tuesday, June 16, 2026, community members can join Bill Kinkel and Walter Ozark at Vera Lee Meeting and Event Venue in Alton for a conversation about estate planning. Kinkel with Genesis Financial Group and Ozark with Ozark Law Firm, LLC, will answer questions and provide basic information about how to ensure you and your family are protected.
“It matters where you get your advice from,” Kinkel said. “When we talk about wills and trusts, what are we really talking about? We’re talking about a couple of elements that really make up an estate plan. Usually, with our financial planning process, that estate plan is just one little part of a financial plan. So our goal is helping families get organized in advance of legal decisions, financial decisions that they have to make.”
Kinkel and Ozark will talk about how to create “a resilient estate plan.” Attendees will learn more about the documents they need to create or finetune to ensure the correct people are making decisions for them when the time comes.
Many times, the two men have worked with spouses who don’t have access to bank accounts or clients who have overlooked important decisions that needed to be made before they were incapacitated. While they understand estate planning isn’t much fun, they believe it’s vital to ensure you and your family are taken care of.
“People will procrastinate. Life gets in the way,” Kinkel said. “My hope is that we go through this process and we have these steps and we have the supporting documents, and it will prompt them. The biggest thing is the individual needs to take action. If you don’t take action on it, life gets in your way, and you wind up pushing it off to the side. Incapacity and these types of things can sneak up on you and come out of nowhere.”
Kinkel and Ozark explained that the June 16 event will go over three basic steps to prepare your financial documents so you are ready to meet with an attorney and finalize your estate plan. Ozark hopes that the lunch-and-learn spurs action and encourages people to take that next step.
“I think it’s just the awareness of what you’ve got. We’re there to hopefully provide some assistance,” he said. “Hopefully, people, when they leave there, just have a better handle on, okay, this is what I’ve got to go do, or I’ve got my stuff set up and I don’t have to do anything.”
The lunch-and-learn is free to attend, but spots are limited. You can register online or click here for additional information.
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