About Us
The Estate Planning Council of San Diego is an interdisciplinary organization for professionals involved in estate planning.
Since its inception in 1955, the Council's primary objective has been to provide a better understanding of the services performed by attorneys, Certified Public Accountants, financial planners, life insurance agents, appraisers, trust officers, private professional fiduciaries, planned giving professionals, realtors, caregiving agencies and others substantially involved in estate planning and to promote cooperation among them.
Our meetings provide a medium for discussion of various, up-to-date estate planning topics of common interest. In addition to the excellent educational information and technical content, our meetings afford our members the opportunity to network, meet old friends and make new ones within the San Diego professional estate planning community.
The Council welcomes prospective new members and guests to attend our meetings which are held once a month.
President's Welcome Message 2024-2025
Welcome to the 2024-25 program year at the Estate Planning Council of San Diego. We’re looking forward to another year packed full of interesting continuing education and informative presentations across the broad spectrum of planning and managing our clients’ estates and legacies. We have seven evening dinner presentations planned, along with 3 social events, beginning with our fall social on September 17 at Stone Brewery in Liberty Station. We’ll follow that up with a presentation on important considerations for estate planning across national borders. I’m really looking forward to that one!
In case you’re not familiar with our schedule, we meet at the centrally located Legacy Convention Center in Mission Valley on the third Tuesday of most months (we’re typically dark in July and August). See a full listing of our 2024-2025 event calendar by visiting https://www.epcsd.org/.
Your board is hard at work to make this a great year, and we’d love to get any feedback you might have for us. We’re looking to grow the organization this year, to get us above the 100 mark for the first time since COVID. To that end, I’d encourage you to find a colleague who hasn’t been to one of our meetings and encourage them to come for a visit. If each of us can find just one more member, then we double our size in no time! If you know any CPAs who focus on trusts and estates, or insurance agents who are skilled in estate and charitable planning, our membership is a little thin in those two disciplines.
Speaking of the board, I’m delighted to be supported by four outstanding professionals and would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their dedication to the Estate Planning Council of San Diego:
- Jay Robinson Duff, Trust Officer, Past President
- Charles Williams, CPA, Treasurer
- Daniel Weiner, Attorney, Director
- Löan Shillinger, Attorney, Director, Membership
I’d also like to thank Jake Erlandson, CFA, CFP for helping out with our program calendar, and Tom Gotfredson, who has agreed to help out securing sponsors for the rest of our program year. We are also supported by our absolutely amazing administrator Lorin Silva who is returning for her fourth year assisting the Council.
On the sponsor front, we are excited to announce that we have threevSilver level sponsors lined up this year. Thanks to Dan Weiner of Wiener Law for stepping up at the Silver level ($1,500) as well as Valerie Medina of Trust Properties USA, and Scott Schechter of Eagle Strategies. I’d also like to thank Jay Robinson-Duff with First American Trust for stepping up as our new Current Event Sponsor ($2,500). We still have one sponsorship opportunity available: Gold level ($3,000). Please see Rick Brooks or Lorin Silva if you would like to learn more about sponsoring the Council for the 24-25 program year.
I (Rick Brooks) have agreed to be the beverage sponsor for our Fall Social. Kelli Burger of Weatherly Asset Management will sponsor our October event and Jacqueline Silverman of Aging Advisory Services has agreed to be our November Event sponsor. Future events are still available to sponsor, so it’s a great opportunity to get your name in front of your professional colleagues.
Even with the generous support of these and prior sponsors, it was still necessary to raise the annual membership fee to $525 for regular membership. Emeritus members pay $95 per dinner presentation. Guest fees are $110 per dinner presentation (which I should point out barely covers our costs). The Gold Sponsor can bring 2 free guests per dinner presentation and Silver Sponsors 1 free guest per dinner presentation.
Welcome aboard to new members and welcome back for returning members. The Board wishes all of you a successful year ahead. We hope you enjoy your membership in the Estate Planning Council of San Diego and that it proves to be rewarding for you and your business.
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