Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I'm sorry, I'm on my dog.
[00:00:03] Hey everybody. I get a lot of questions on Reddit and I see that they are very similar from time to time, but they're also very common to questions that we receive in the office and by phone and through our own website. So I like to answer these.
[00:00:19] And the question that's coming in today is from someone talking about parents may only be around for the next 15 years or so. This person has no house or their car. They have no debt. They have about 300,000 in assets. Assets, most of them look like they are in tax free retirement accounts. And they're wondering, do I need a will? They've named beneficiaries on everything and is there anything else they need to be thinking of about the end times?
[00:00:50] I'm Joe Siegel. I've got almost 30 years of experience in real estate, business, estate planning, asset protection. And I do this because I like for people to get answers from someone who has a lot of experience, not necessarily just someone else on Reddit who's had this happen to them before because we see this every day. So the first question is, do I need a will from this person? Maybe, maybe not. The best thing to do is to sit down with a lawyer and talk about it with this person. Just based on what I'm seeing here, they may not even need a will because what they have, it sounds like beneficiary designations will take care of everything.
[00:01:29] But depending on the size and the way it's going and who they want to leave it to, they may need a will.
[00:01:35] But like I said, what I'm seeing here, with no debt, no house, no car, no real assets other than furniture and clothes, I don't really see a problem there. The only problem they're going to have is maybe who is going to be allowed to go in there and take that furniture and distribute those clothes to Goodwill or to other people. And that's where fights break out is after someone's gone, it's always daddy's gone, who's got the will. Or another favorite saying I have is where there's a will, there's a relative.
[00:02:03] So people can show up and they'll get in arguments and then have bad blood about it for years to come over a sofa. And it's really stupid to let people do that. And that's one place where a will would come in handy because you would name one person as the personal representative, what used to be known as the executor of the will, who would have that authority to go in there and take your stuff and. And distribute it to whoever's supposed to get it or however you want to get rid of it. Now, they say they've named all their beneficiaries on their accounts. Everything's going to a charity.
[00:02:34] You are perfectly fine to do that. You leave all of your retirement accounts to a charity. It may not be great for the charity, but they will take whatever they can get. In most cases, especially if it's a 401k or an IRA, it becomes an inherited 401k or an IRA. So that can be problematic for them because they're not going to get all the money at once. But it's definitely something for you to think of. And this is what I often tell people who have no family and no children that they want to leave anything to.
[00:03:05] So we often get into deep discussions about charities and causes that they are passionate about that they can leave things to. And then we work on beneficiary designations, on life insurance policies, as well as on retirement accounts to make sure that those goals. Now, bank accounts, investment accounts, those typically aren't covered like that. So the will would be needed to then leave those investment accounts and bank accounts to the charity that you desire. So that would be a problem. And then anything else I should be thinking about? That's the last question this person has. They're thinking a lot about what happens when they're gone, but I don't think they're thinking anything about what happens if they live. And that's my biggest issue that I have with a lot of folks is they always think about, well, I don't have a will, I don't need a will. I don't have a trust, I don't need a trust.
[00:03:53] The big thing is, okay, well, but what happens if you become incapacitated? You have dementia, you have.
[00:04:02] You're. You're physically incapacitated. Maybe you have als, Lou Gehrig's disease. There are these things that can happen. Parkinson's, other diseases you can have where you are alive, but you cannot do anything for yourself. And you need documentation for that. I call that the living probate.
[00:04:21] So in that case, the lawyer. We are usually going to sit there and we discuss a lot with our clients. We discuss deeply about durable powers of attorney. That's the financial document that will allow someone you trust with your finances to handle your finances, your banking, your retirement accounts, everything else like that. Getting rid of these clothes, getting rid of this furniture. They can deal with that under the power of attorney while you're still alive.
[00:04:47] You'll want a healthcare surrogate, which is sort of like a healthcare power of attorney, where you designate one person who is that person who can talk to your healthcare providers, telling them what to do, when to do it, how far to go, and how and when to stop, when they can stop. To keep you alive, you'll need a HIPAA designation. Maybe you have additional people who you want to be able to hear your medical condition, your medical records, your medical information. Your healthcare surrogate's automatically going to have that through the healthcare surrogate. But maybe you have other people in your life who you also want to be able to hear from your doctors and nurses and pharmacists and everyone else about your condition and be able to be freely discussed to them and in front of them. And if you have this HIPAA release designation in your file with the, with the physician or the hospital or the nursing home, whatever, they can talk to those other people as well, not just your healthcare surrogate. So now the healthcare surrogate can get maybe other opinions and maybe some help from other people, you know, who also understand medical terminology and can help them out with things.
[00:05:55] Maybe they don't live in the area, but they're, they're nearby. Maybe they can talk by phone. They can, they can talk to the doctors as well.
[00:06:02] You're going to have a living will. Living will is sort of when you want to take effect, whether you're in a persistent vegetative state. You, you merely have a terminal and incurable condition. You're in a state that you just can't care for yourself. You want to take effect in any one of those three, or any of those three, or only one of those three times or. And then how far you want the doctors to go to save your life if you are in that condition, how far you do you want them to provide feeding tubes, just merely pain management or nothing at all. So it is sort of a guide to your healthcare providers as to when it goes into effect and how far the doctors have to go to keep you going. And then of course, you know, when you are in that stage, you can do a do not resuscitate order. That's different than a living will. A lot of people think they're the same thing. They are totally different. And when you're in that state where you're considering a dnr, a do not resuscitate order, the hospital, the social worker at the hospital is usually going to explain that to you and how it's going to work. And the physicians and nurses will also explain it to you at that time, because that's, that's pretty serious and usually only at the very, very end of times. Another document that you may do is a declaration of pre need guardianship for your.
[00:07:18] You may be at a point where you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of your property, and the person's named in your power of attorney and your healthcare surrogate. Maybe they are unable to do it, maybe they're also incapacitated or something's happened and all the alternates are simply not qualified to do it. Or they just say, I'm not going to do it at the last minute. So at that point the court steps in and says, well then we have to appoint someone in that document. You would typically name people who you trust who could do that. And the court will go back and look at that document and see who you've declared that you would prefer to serve this. And they won't necessarily go to the public list of public guardians that are out there. They'll try to choose these people.
[00:08:03] If they meet the criteria and they're able to fulfill the functions, they'll let them be the guardians of your person and maybe a different person. Guardian of your estate, guardian of your belongings, your stuff, your assets financially. And what you do, that's a simple one page document. It's filled out, you sign it, witness notarized. It gets filed with the clerk of the probate court in the county where you live. If something should happen to you, that happens to go before the court for the court to determine who should be your guardian or if a guardian should be appointed for you, the first thing they do is they look to the clerk. The clerk looks in the file, finds it, the one that you have filed. It's held in confidence in private confidential areas of the clerk's office until it's needed. They pull it out of that confidential area, they give it to the judge, and the judge then calls those people forward so the judge can examine them, make sure that they can fulfill the functions as your conservator or your guardian, and they put them in place and appoint them to be guardian of your estate and guardian of your person so that you don't have a complete stranger who does not know you and you don't know handling all of that for you. So those are just some documents that I think this person, this redditor, should be thinking about for the end times, as they put it. Because while a lot of people plan for truly the end times, they don't plan for what happens, that it's not the end times, but you're also not unable to take care of yourself yet. So those are some things that I would recommend for this Redditor. Of course, talk to an estate planning attorney to make sure that it fits your situation. Talk to your tax advisor. Talk to your financial planner to make sure that everything is in place to go the way you want it to go should that time ever come. And of course, we're always here if you should ever need anything.
[00:09:49] Thanks for listening to this edition of Trust this. If you got something out of it, please press like and subscribe and give us a five star review to help us reach others who can benefit from this series. Until next time, keep aspiring to a better life.
