NAEPC President's Message

Welcome to the official website of the National Association of Estate Planners & Councils (NAEPC), the association of choice for estate planning professionals. If you’re looking for an estate planner, you’ve come to the right place. Our organization can connect you with a professional who has recognized, earned credentials and is a member in good standing of a local estate planning council in an area where one is available to them.

We maintain a database, available to you within this site, of Accredited Estate Planners® (AEPs®) and Estate Planning Law Specialists (EPLSs) who adhere to the concept of the team approach to estate planning so that your plan may be developed by a team of professionals of your choosing from the disciplines of attorney, accountant, insurance and financial planning or trust officer. Our designees must earn and maintain, in good standing, a gateway credential in their designated professional discipline as an Attorney, Certified Public Accountant, Chartered Life Underwriter, Certified Trust and Financial Advisor, Chartered Financial Consultant or Chartered Financial Planner, and must then meet NAEPC's stringent criteria of continuing education, experience, proven knowledge and peer review. We make it easy for you to find an AEP with one of these six gateway credentials and to put together your own team to be sure each relevant area of expertise is brought to bear on your personal estate plan. You choose the extent of involvement you want your team members to have.

If you are an estate planning professional, we extend an invitation to you to learn more about our 230 affiliated local estate planning councils and their 27,000+ members. Affiliated local estate planning councils are required to have members representing, at minimum, the four primary disciplines of attorney, accountant, trust officer and insurance and financial planning. Many councils include other disciplines, such as planned giving specialists. We believe that maintaining a membership in an affiliated council is critical to professional development and encourage you to find the council nearest you today.

NAEPC is in the midst of several very exciting projects. National Estate Planning Awareness Week was declared in October 2008. We’re encouraging our affiliated local councils to plan public estate planning day programs within their home communities and have materials available to assist. National Estate Planning Awareness Week in 2011 was quite a success with several national and local publication mentions, as well as seminars geared toward fulfilling the mission of public education. In addition, many affiliated local councils planned their own estate planning day programs within their communities.

The upcoming 49th Annual Conference is scheduled from November 7-9, 2012 in Orlando, Florida. Please consider joining us for this outstanding event. The 2011 conference was a tremendous success thanks to the talent our speaker and the outstanding attendees.

Finally, we will continue to pursue our Mission with vigor in order to fulfill our Vision. I look forward to being your president during 2012.

Very truly yours, Clark B. McCleary, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, AEP® McCleary & Associates