Legacy Law Center

Focus and practice areas

This is an estate planning and elder law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Its work reaches families across Washtenaw County and the Michigan communities nearby. The estate planning side covers wills, trusts, and powers of attorney. It also handles probate and estate administration, charitable planning, estate tax planning, and business succession planning.

Legacy Law Center keeps these services under one roof, so one family can plan a will early and come back later for the administration work that follows a death. That pairing is common among firms that treat estate planning and elder law as parts of the same job. It lets a client keep the same lawyers as needs change. An estate plan often gets revisited after a marriage or a move, and that continuity has value.

The two fields overlap in practice. A plan written while someone is healthy is also the plan that governs care and money if health declines. The client is often a family thinking ahead, or one already dealing with a parent's decline, and both bring the same questions about property and who decides.

The documents behind an estate plan

Most of the estate planning work runs on a few main documents. A will directs where property goes after a death. A trust can hold assets during life and pass them on with less court involvement. A power of attorney names someone to act for a person who cannot do so, and it can cover money, health decisions, or both.

Trusts often come up when a family wants to keep an estate out of probate, or to set terms on how money reaches a young or vulnerable heir. The firm handles probate and estate administration too, which is the court process that settles an estate once someone has died. Doing both means it sees the planning and the aftermath.

Business succession planning and charitable planning sit alongside that work for clients who need them. In my opinion, having probate handled by the same office that drafted the will is a practical convenience for a family already under strain.

Elder law and long-term care

The elder law work covers long-term care, Medicaid, and Medicare. Medicare and Medicaid are different programs, and this work leans toward the Medicaid rules that decide who pays for care. Long-term care planning tends to turn on cost, since nursing care is expensive and Medicaid sets rules about assets and timing.

Medicaid crisis planning is the version of that work done when care is needed soon and no earlier plan is in place. Asset protection covers the steps a family can take within those rules. The firm also prepares special needs trusts for relatives living with disabilities. A special needs trust protects a disabled heir's access to benefits while still providing for them.

Care decisions and the courts

The firm petitions for guardianships and conservatorships. A guardianship covers decisions about a person's care, while a conservatorship covers money and property. This work is for seniors, adults living with mental illness, and developmentally disabled adults. For veterans and surviving spouses, the firm assists with benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs, and those benefits often go unclaimed.

How the team is built

Two attorneys carry the legal work: Terrence Bertram and Caitlin Do. The site lists Bertram as an attorney and counselor. He was born and raised in Northern Michigan, the middle child in a family of seven boys, and he is married to Maria and has two daughters.

Caitlin Do works as an attorney with the firm. She earned an associate's degree in paralegal studies and pre-law at Washtenaw Community College. A paralegal background is useful groundwork for estate planning, since trust and probate work runs on careful paperwork. That kind of detail work fills a good share of these files.

Chelsea Bertram runs client services as Director of Operations and Client Services. A named operations lead gives a client a clear point of contact for questions about scheduling and files. The structure is small, and the roles are easy to follow.

What the record shows

The firm states a combined 30 years of estate planning experience across its team. A figure like that points to time spent in the field, read as a team total. As a reviewer, I see a small firm with a defined lane: the two attorneys handle the same estate planning and elder law work, and the service list stays inside those two fields.

Staying regional carries weight in this kind of law. Estate and elder law run on state rules, and Michigan probate matters sit at the county level. A firm centered on Washtenaw County works those local courts as routine. That local footing counts for a nearby family.

For someone comparing firms, the scope is easy to weigh, with a defined service list and named people behind it. A family in the Ann Arbor area with a Medicaid question or a guardianship petition can see where the firm fits before the first meeting. The office is in Ann Arbor, and the same two attorneys handle the files that come through it.