RIA Group Unveils Software for Real Estate Planning

A software system designed for real estate planning professionals has been unveiled by RIA Group (New York). The Wealth Transfer Planning software package allows users to develop customized estate documents, including wills, trusts, planning memoranda and engagement letters, in minutes instead of days. The system uses the SmartWords software engine from

The Technology Group (Baltimore) to gather information using a questionnaire. Data from the questionnaire is made available to all relevant documents and forms to provide efficiency and expertise for developing estate plan strategies. Conceived and designed by four of the nation's top estate planning lawyers, the software allows estate planning professionals to use a value-based model for billing clients rather than a time-based model. "The software focuses on the user on how to ask clients the appropriate questions for each situation," said Howard Zaritsky, one of the lawyers behind the product. Wealth Transfer Planning allows lawyers to "base decisions on what they know." The product runs on IBM-compatible 486DX/66 MH or better, with at least 16 MB of RAM, on a Windows 95 platform. A network version requires 50 MB of server space. The price is $1,895 and includes a half day seminar training session.