WJA 2024: Stacey Janssen

Owner, Janssen Estate Probate & Elder Law, Kansas City

Attorney Stacey Janssen recalls going to an event in the estate planning field only to find there weren’t enough women there to fill an entire table.

Since then, things have changed.

“We fill lots of tables now,” said the 61-year-old University of Kansas graduate.

Janssen has seen a fair number of those changes. After starting out with Kansas Legal Services’ Senior Citizen Law Project, she noticed that some lawyers were marketing themselves in the elder law space and decided that she could do it better than some of them. As a result, she spent a decade and a half in practice on her own.

“I love the elder law/estate planning practice,” noted the Salina, Kan. native. “Even in routine estate planning, people are trusting me with a sacred moment in their life — their death, and the transfer of their wealth to people that they care about.”

Clients have responded to her warmth and sense of duty. She recalled one woman whom she helped in arranging her mother’s affairs as the latter went into a nursing home.

“She said, ‘You know, I’m grateful that you all have been so compassionate and helpful to us’,” remembered Janssen. “‘I love my mother so much and when I think of my mother, I think of how soft her hands are and how she took care of us. You have cared for my family in the same way that she cared for us’.”

For the last two years, Janssen has been back out on her own with a firm that assists with everything from fiduciary litigation and probate matters to Medicaid planning and guardianships.

A former treasurer of the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association and former director of the Estate Planning Society of Kansas City, Janssen has served on the board of directors for the Johnson County Bar Association and chaired that county’s Probate Bench Bar Committee as well as the KCMBA’s Probate Section. She also served as the Kansas Bar Association’s Elder Law section president. She was a founding member of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys Kansas Chapter and is a recipient of the KCMBA’s Distinguished Counselor Award.