Navigating the complexities of estate planning is no small feat, even for those of us well-versed in the art of law. Todd Whatley and Ian Weiner promise an enlightening conversation that strips away the mystique surrounding estate management, particularly for my fellow legal eagles. We dissect familiar pitfalls that snag even the sharpest legal minds, and emphasize why it's crucial to have an estate planning specialist peek under the hood of your plans. Retirement is a game-changer for attorneys, and this episode is packed with strategic wisdom from elder law expert Todd Wattley to ensure your assets are shielded and your wishes honored.
Crucial financial strategies aren't just for clients—lawyers need to secure their legacy too. We delve into the mechanics of testamentary trusts and the robust protection they offer your children's inheritance against life's unpredictables like divorce or legal entanglements. With a nod to the indispensability of a comprehensive power of attorney, our discussion also underscores the importance of personalized legal advice in solidifying your financial future. This episode is more than a mere conversation; it's a beacon for legal professionals seeking to safeguard their family's prosperity. Connect with us for tailored guidance and join the ranks of those who've taken control of their financial destiny.
Navigating the complexities of estate planning is no small feat, even for those of us well-versed in the art of law. Todd Whatley and Ian Weiner promise an enlightening conversation that strips away the mystique surrounding estate management, particularly for my fellow legal eagles. We dissect familiar pitfalls that snag even the sharpest legal minds, and emphasize why it's crucial to have an estate planning specialist peek under the hood of your plans. Retirement is a game-changer for attorneys, and this episode is packed with strategic wisdom from elder law expert Todd Wattley to ensure your assets are shielded and your wishes honored.
Crucial financial strategies aren't just for clients—lawyers need to secure their legacy too. We delve into the mechanics of testamentary trusts and the robust protection they offer your children's inheritance against life's unpredictables like divorce or legal entanglements. With a nod to the indispensability of a comprehensive power of attorney, our discussion also underscores the importance of personalized legal advice in solidifying your financial future. This episode is more than a mere conversation; it's a beacon for legal professionals seeking to safeguard their family's prosperity. Connect with us for tailored guidance and join the ranks of those who've taken control of their financial destiny.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Lawyer's Money Show with your hosts, todd Wattley and Ian Weiner, where finance meets the legal profession. Here we dive deep into the economics of law practice, from managing your firm's finances to optimizing personal wealth strategies for legal professionals. Every episode we bring you insights, strategies and stories from leading experts to help you navigate the financial landscape of the legal world. Stay tuned as we uncover the tools and tactics needed to help lawyers make the right money moves so they can grow their career, manage their practice and optimize their wealth so they can focus on enjoying the life they've worked so hard to build. For more resources, visit us at wwwlawyerstotalplancom.
Speaker 2:
That's right. Welcome to the Lawyer's Money Show. My name is Ian Weiner. I'm your co-host, along with my co-host, todd Wattley. Hey, man, good to be here. This is going to be a fun one. As I always say, this might be a theme, this might be a theme, it's always a fun one. We're going to talk about something that is near and dear to your heart. Sure that I'm going to ask attorneys not to tune out on, okay, because if we could save you a little bit of money, this is worth 15, 20 minutes while you're on the treadmill or something, absolutely. But we're going to talk about a state planning, okay.
Speaker 3:
And please put your ego to the side and think. I know that, yeah, but if you do it every day, please understand this is a specialty and this is something that has a lot of nuances and a lot of things that you may not be thinking about. And if you had Joe down in, you know family law, do your estate plan. I really encourage you to think about getting it done with a professional, someone who truly does this. And if you're an estate planning attorney number one, have you done yours? Do it, okay, I'm sure you can, but particularly for those attorneys that are aging and are, you know, looking at retirement, you know your estate plan probably needs to be a little bit different. And yeah, I'm I am nervous talking about a legal topic with attorneys. Okay, it does make me, because I can just imagine the thoughts out there.
Speaker 3:
But this is something that I do and my particularly very specialized niche is I I work with older people and older attorneys. You know they're older people and there were very specific things you need to think about in your estate plan and I would be more than happy to look at yours. But all of us at the state I'm probably not licensed in your state, but there's some general terms, general things in trust that I can look at. And if you, if you want a second opinion without judgment and you know something, please let me look at it. But let's go through some things today and I'll talk about some things that surprise. Even attorneys are like oh I hadn't thought about that, because they don't do elder law, they don't think about older people. They've been through this themselves and so, yeah, there's a ton of things I would love to talk about.
Speaker 2:
There's a ton to talk about, and you know a question that I have and I'm I'm springing this on you, so I'm curious, you know, of the estate plans that you reviewed from attorneys, was there ever a time that you didn't have any notes for them? Can you think of?
Speaker 3:
any? Honestly no, and it's just because I work with people who get owed, go to the nursing home and then die. So I see these plans implemented and oh, there's so many things that can go wrong. But that probably what you learned in law school. And the other thing attorneys are thinking is I'm a lawyer, I can do my own. Oh God, please. The attorney who represents themselves has a fool for a client. Okay, please, get this looked at professionally.
Speaker 2:
Okay, I'm going to give you some things to think about, you know, as we go, but to answer your question, no, there's nothing that there's, not one that really sticks out in your head was like man, that was a heck of an estate plan. No, so I say that as the non-attorney, who really doesn't want to talk about illegal stuff with attorneys. But there's opportunity here, yeah, and what I'm hoping that you hear is not you know you did it wrong or you can't do it, but hey, if you could avoid making mistakes, that will be very expensive mistakes why not do that? Why not avoid those mistakes? And so when we start talking about estate planning, the way that I love to simplify it is, it's just about making sure what you want to happen does happen the way that you want it to.
Speaker 3:
It's that simple and as efficiently as possible. That's what you should want.
Speaker 2:
Yes.
Speaker 3:
So here's some hidden thing. I'm not gonna talk about probate. I know that all of you out there know about probate and in pretty much every state it's always a good idea to not go through probate. And I'm gonna kind of go out on a limb and say most attorneys probably have these sufficient assets and things and, particularly if you own a business, you probably need a trust. Okay, it's just, there's a hope I could go an hour and talk about do you need a trust or not, but I'm gonna say typically for most attorneys, yes, you probably do need a trust. Okay, that being said, you probably want to trust.
Speaker 2:
It's really a big part of it. Trust, yes.
Speaker 3:
That being said, let's talk about some things that I have seen in trust that can cause problems. That may be a little nuanced. Okay, number one, you don't want co-trustees? Okay, co-trustees. Two people doing one job can always go cross ways. That's a problem, yeah.
Speaker 2:
Okay, and there's never egos involved in that situation. No.
Speaker 3:
And, as of the last year, I've become a huge advocate for commercial trustees. Yeah, and there's a great trust company. They are licensed in all 50 states. They are not associated with banks, investment advisors or anyone. Is called a assured trust Small plug. I do some work for them, but that's because they do great work. And think about a corporate trustee particularly for your situation, so that your kids don't have to do that. People are like I'll just support my son. He's the oldest, I'll let him do it. You're giving him a job and it's a very sticky job, that they're dealing with their siblings and you want your siblings to talk to each other five years after you're gone. And if you give one of them a job regarding money and issues, there's a good chance that could go south.
Speaker 2:
Money and family always goes well Todd, no one disagrees Always.
Speaker 3:
So I started saying give your family the gift of a commercial trustee. Yeah, Let the family champion.
Speaker 2:
I love that framing. I love the framing of that yeah.
Speaker 3:
Give your family the gift of a commercial trustee. Let a commercial trustee step in and handle all of that stuff for you. The kids can just sit back and rake in the money, hopefully OK, and not have to deal with all the emotions and things like that. So that's one thing that I see is don't do co-trustees. And I would even go one step further and say do a commercial trustee, and if you don't have one, that you know of assuredtrustcompanycom, great company.
Speaker 3:
So another thing is and I am going to get lagerly here for just a second but you appoint these trustees and particularly if you name a person as your successor trustee, how does that transfer from you being trustee to them being trustee? Short of death, you die. That's easy to determine. We now have the successor trustee as trustee. I work with a lot of people who have dementia and dementia gets progressively worse and that transfer from a person who was competent but nothing immediate happened, no sudden event. They've just progressively gotten worse and at some point they become paranoid and they start making really bad decisions or they are easily influenced by people scammers, caregivers people like that, people that aren't close to them necessarily, the people that are really close to them they tend to be most suspicious of.
Speaker 2:
It's kind of tragic.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. And so the person the parent typically, or you maybe you get paranoid and you think this person, the people closest to you, are trying to take advantage of you and throw you into a nursing home and steal all of your money, when actually someone else is stealing your money or you're not paying the bills. The fact is, you need the successor trustee to come into play. If you will go back and look at your trust, how does that transfer of power occur? In 98% of all trust, the successor comes into the trustee position against the current trustee when two physicians have deemed this person to be incapacitated and having one is bad enough because the person with dementia turns against the people closest to them, probably the person needing to be trustee who is named as the successor trustee, and In their mind, with this dementia, they don't trust you anymore. You're trying to steal their money. You've done nothing wrong, but you're just the one keeping them from driving. You're the one keeping them from doing things that they obviously can do in their head. There's nothing wrong with me. I don't have dementia. You're just making this up, and so it's a very contentious role. You can't become the trustee of this trust and protect mom and do things with her money until you get her to not just one doctor, but two doctors. You need two physicians to say yes, you're incapacitated. And if mom refuses to go, or if you refuse to go to the doctor, we have this trust, we have powers of attorney. Everything's beautiful, but none of it works because you won't go to the doctor. We ended up in guardianship court and so now you, the attorney. You have helped tens of thousands of people and done all this great work, and now we're in court saying all these bad things about you, that you're incapacitated, you can't make decisions, you're making really bad decisions and we need to take your rights away from you.
Speaker 3:
Whereas in my trust, that transfer of power is the successor trustee sees there's a problem and calls the attorney or just issues a letter to you and says hey, dad, I think you're incapacitated, I think you're making bad decisions, you need to go get tested. And in the trust, it says once this letter is presented, you have 30 days to go get tested. If you don't go within 30 days, power transfers. The successor trustee is now the trustee. If you do go which you probably won't go, but if you did go, surely they're gonna deem you to be incapacitated If, by chance, your doctor says you're just quirky. Okay, you're just. No, you're not incapacitated, you're just quirky. It's your money, you can do with it what you want to. There we go. But chances are, if your successor trustee is bowed enough to say hey dad, I think you're incapacitated, pull in this clause. Then you either go and you're deemed to be incapacitated, or you don't go and after 30 days, power transfers to the successor trustee.
Speaker 2:
I love that, because on paper, the two doctors thing makes a lot of sense, sure, so this is a knowledge versus wisdom issue. You can Google any of this stuff. You can get your trust off of Google, sure, but knowing how to apply the right information and the right situation leads to better outcomes like this.
Speaker 3:
And people think, well, at that point dad's sick and he's probably been to the doctor, and so, yeah, we just get a letter from the doctor. It's no big deal. I mean, a lot of times people with dementia are healthy except in their brain, and they don't go to the doctor. And at this point, when they hit that paranoia stage, they refuse to go to the doctor, they refuse to take a bath. They get really cranky about a lot of things, and going to the doctor is definitely one of those, because everybody's saying all these horrible things. You're saying I have dementia. I don't have dementia, I just, yeah, I forgot my pills this morning. But that's no big deal. It's just this ongoing thing that the person doesn't know that they're sick, but everyone around them knows they are, and so that's just. That's one of those things that can throw you into court. That's a tiny little thing when you thought that you had it covered, okay.
Speaker 3:
The next topic is how does your money go from you to your heirs? So, in a lot of trust, the attorney who does it says At my death, the money in my trust goes outright to my kids. Equal distribution between my kids. Okay, that makes total sense.
Speaker 2:
And we'll pause for you to grab your trust.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, go grab your trust and see if it says that or if it just says to my children period. What it does is that's an outright distribution. It's their money. It goes from your trust outside of that trust into the free world of their hands. And if your children are going through bankruptcy, divorce or lawsuits, or if they're drug addicts or any you know spin thrifts, it's their money, free of any strings, of any protections. It's their money and if they're going through any of those problems, your money could be gone pretty quick. What I do is, in every one of my trusts, your trust creates a testimony trust for your child. Meaning it's like my son Tyler. My trust creates the Tyler-Huatley Testimony Trust. He's the trustee of it, he's the beneficiary of it. But putting it in that trust gives it those guardrails of protection from bankruptcy, divorce and lawsuits. There's no reason not to do that. If you trust your child, they're good with money. You still want to put it in this bucket with these protections.
Speaker 2:
It's like free liability protection. Free liability yeah, absolutely. What is that worth? Every penny in the trust, that's what it's worth, yeah.
Speaker 3:
And if your child's not good with money they're a spin thrift they can be the beneficiary, but someone else can be the trustee. Or if they're a drug addict, someone else can be the trustee. So look at your trust and see does it make outright distributions to your children? If it does, I would highly recommend you get that looked at. And if you've not done a trust, meet with someone who does that. And if you want to call us, I'll be glad to discuss this with you. And if you're in Arkansas, I'll do it for you. But if you're not in Arkansas or Oklahoma, where I am also licensed any other state I know people, okay, I know a lot of people and I can find someone who will do those trusts to incorporate those things. So again, it's well worth the effort. Yes, you're an attorney, you know a lot of stuff, but this is a niche that has a lot of implications, and think about these implications.
Speaker 2:
Things really do hinge on one line or one word here, absolutely. I mean that's, you cannot be too precise here, yeah.
Speaker 3:
And I could spend a whole episode on powers of attorney, but make sure that you do a power of attorney that is very comprehensive.
Speaker 3:
And so, generally you're, you want to see an elder law attorney at this point to get those things that if you are aging, you're looking at retirement, thinking about retirement, you want to see an elder law attorney and if you call me, I will be glad to talk to you about where you are who I would recommend that you go see. I can even say, hey, I'm sending my friend to you and open up those doors for you and get you in and get you a really good product. And but, yeah, think about the implications of this. This is your lifetime of savings, what you have worked your entire life for. Here's this document that's going to pass this on to your kids. And you're wanting to do this with Joe from accounting or your family law attorneys in your own firm. You want them to do this. No, no, take the time, take the effort, spend the money to go to an attorney who really knows estate planning and can make sure these things are taken care of for you.
Speaker 2:
It's just one of these areas that is worth doing right the first time. You just you've got to do it. We need to do a whole episode on if you own your firm, a state planning in that situation, because that's a whole other layer of complexity here, and we haven't talked about taxes. That's their implications with that as well. But really it comes down to making sure that what you want to happen actually happens and what you find a lot of times and in the meetings that we're in together I also find is what you think is going to happen is not what is actually written, and that is probably the most frustrating thing.
Speaker 2:
I mean, it's one thing to think to not have done it. It's another thing to think you have done it and it's right and oh, by the way, it's not going to go the way you think it will.
Speaker 3:
Sure, and this is a very specific field yes, you're an attorney, you can read it, but get the opinion of an expert that this is what they do all day. Just like you, you're really good at what you do and if I came into your world I'd be like I don't know. So have that same confidence and lack of ego to step into my world and say, yeah, todd, I don't know what we're doing. Or yes, elder law attorney, I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:
Just make sure we're not missing anything, absolutely. The worst case scenario is just it might cost everything that you've saved, but you might save a couple grand doing it You're so you know what that's fine.
Speaker 3:
Sure, who cares? All right, thank you all very much. Thank you all for listening, and I am serious. Please call me okay. Probably the best way is Todd at Lawyers total plan calm. You can get me there, send an email and we'll start a Conversation. I'm not trying to sell you anything, but I can help you find someone and Get you an estate plan that you love, and we'll do exactly what you want.
Speaker 2:
We care about this stuff we don't we don't want people to overpay and just have things Unnecessary happen. It keeps us up and it bugs us. That's why we're sharing these ideas with you. So phone number. Phone number is 479 485 1911. You can email Todd at lawyers total plan calm or Ian at lawyers total plan calm, and Like, subscribe, share. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for joining us on the Lawyers money show. We hope today's episode has provided you with valuable insights and actionable advice to enhance your financial well-being. For more information, to access show notes or to explore further, please visit our website at wwwlawyerstotalplancom. We look forward to guiding you through your financial journey. You can give us a call at 479 485 1911. Until next time, keep striving for excellence in both law and finance.