Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You trust this person with money as well as your child. Maybe they're a great, they'd be a great parent. They would raise your child just as you would, and you're happy with that. But they are absolutely horrible with money and they're going to squander all the child's money.
[00:00:15] And you're concerned about that.
[00:00:22] Hey everybody. We get some Reddit questions that come through, and I just like to go ahead and try to answer those as best as I can through. We try to answer them on Reddit, of course, so that the person gets an answer from us. But I also want to try to answer them here on video, just so everybody gets a good feel of some of these questions that come across Reddit and make sure that you know about Reddit. Reddit.com It's a great site to use to ask questions and get answers to questions from the community. Sometimes you're getting them from people who know what they're talking about, sometimes they don't. I'm Joe Siegel. I'm a lawyer, estate planning, asset protection and business and real estate law in Orlando, Florida, with almost 30 years of experience coming up on 30 years in 2026.
[00:01:08] And so I hope that what you're getting as an answer from me is an answer that you would consider to be from someone with experience and not AI or just someone out there in the community that you don't know. But here's one question we got that across and it's from someone who wanted to share their thoughts. They live in Florida and last year the, the Redditor and their sister, they went through a tough time when their dad passed away. Suddenly he did not have a clear will. Took months for his mom and the kids to sort out the house, the bank accounts, and even small personal items. Watching that chaos made me realize how important it is to plan ahead. They give their age, they have one minor child who's only seven years old. They have a homestead, some savings, retirement accounts, no business or complicated assets. Their biggest worries were making sure their child is cared for. If something happens to both of the parents, avoiding a long and messy probate process for a modest estate, and making sure that their spouse can easily manage everything. If something should happen suddenly, and this actually happened in my family recently, we lost a family member at 54 years old, very suddenly, very unexpectedly recently.
[00:02:26] And the, that part of that wing of the family has had a just, it's, it's slowed down that part of the family. His children have had to pretty much just take leaves of absence from Work for a couple of months just to deal with trying to find out where all the debts are, where all the assets are, what's going on with dad's estate. Because dad was not expected to leave us this early in life.
[00:02:52] So I just want to talk to this person, maybe answer the questions that they had. First question that I often get when I have especially a young couple come to me who they have children.
[00:03:03] Minor children. Minor. And when we say minor children in Florida, that's any child under 18 years old. Because any child under 18 years old is a minor who is not able to legally care for themselves according to the law in Florida.
[00:03:16] So a lot of parents are often concerned, well, what happens to my children?
[00:03:20] And some people will just say, well, I've told everybody that I want my sister and brother in law to have our children and to take care of them when we pass. That doesn't necessarily cut it. I mean, that's nice. But if you don't already have something in place, the law is going to choose who takes care of your children. And it may not be anyone in your family because it's always up to the judge to determine if those people in your family are competent and capable and able and willing to take care of your children.
[00:03:51] So if they don't have the financial wherewithal, if they don't have the emotional and physical means to take care of your children, things like that, they, the court will not grant guardianship of your children to those people. Also another thing that a lot of people don't think of is, you know, well, those people are going to control the money as well as the child.
[00:04:13] And do you trust this person with money as well as your child? Maybe they're a great, they'd be a great parent. They, they would raise your child just as you would. And you're, you're happy with that. But they are absolutely horrible with money and they're going to squander all the, the child's money and you're concerned about that or that they'll just give the child everything and let them go and do what they want to do with the money too soon and then they won't have anything left after they turn 18, 20, 21, 25, 30, 40. And you want to make sure it's taken care of. Well, Florida has this great mechanism. It's called a declaration of pre need guardianship for a minor child. And it's a one page document where you as the parents can name that person or persons who you want to take care of the children. And you can even name alternates so that if that person is gone or unable to do it, or the court says no, they just can't do it, you've got the next person down the line who can take over and be that child's guardian. One thing you can do too is you can name a guardian of the child and you can name a guardian of the child's property. So they can be two different people, so that one person's got the purse strings and one child and one person's got the child. And you keep them separate so that there's sort of a check on each other to make sure that the money's not being squandered and that the children are being taken care of properly. So the pre need guardianship for a minor child. Like I said, it's a one page document. Once it's done, it gets filed with the probate court, the clerk of the county where you live. It is a free filing, you don't have to pay anything to file that.
[00:05:45] And they keep it in a private confidential spot. And then what happens is if any of these children ever come up before the court to determine a guardian, let's say something heaven forbid should happen to both parents, they can no longer care for the children.
[00:05:59] Then the court goes to the clerk and says, okay, do we have a pre need guardianship? Has it been checked? They check, they bring it out and they go, yes, here it is, your honor, here's the pre new guardianship for the minor children. And the judge, they call those named people in, they talk to them, they question them, make sure they're okay. And if they're okay, the court grants them the people you chose to be the guardian of your children and your children's stuff, their money, their estate, their property. So that's one thing that I would recommend to this person. Number one, it's a very simple, easy form to get, fill out and file with the probate clerk in the county where you live. Another thing is they want to avoid long and messy probate process for their modest estate. Well, this is where I'd recommend definitely you should meet with an estate planning attorney. A lot of people we meet with, we're able to pretty much avoid probate. There are so many things that we can do without having to go into a full blown trust, a revocable living trust based plan for them to help them avoid probate. There are beneficiary designations on retirement accounts, there are beneficiary designations on life insurance, there are homestead deeds, there are enhanced Life estate deeds, things that we can do with the deeds in all your properties to make sure that things are handled without having to go into a full, you know, expensive estate plan.
[00:07:23] So there are bank accounts, there are certain things that we can just talk to you about, and then you can just go and get them titled in a way that they're not going to go through probate anyway. They're going to, in the blink of an eye, pass to whoever you wanted to take it over and they'll be done. So that's number one. So an estate planning attorney, like our firm, that's one of the things that we do with our clients all the time, is we, we talk about what they have, how they hold it, how it's named and who's going to get it to make sure that those beneficiary designations are right and make sure everything is in a good shape so that it passes the way that they want it to without having to do the will. Now, we still, nine times out of ten, we'll still recommend a will because we want to make sure that if you acquire something later or if there's something that you have in your assets or maybe you inherit it later, we want to make sure it's covered so that the will, we'll make sure it goes to whoever's supposed to get it. So the will will be there.
[00:08:16] And then there's also what I call the living probate documents, your durable power of attorney, your health care surrogate, your living will, HIPAA designations, pre need guardianship, declaration of pre need guardians yourself.
[00:08:31] We will also prepare all of those documents along with your will to go along and work together so that both spouses are comfortable that everything's going to pass and that if, if they don't, if they just become incapacitated, that everything is handled by someone who they trust financially and physically to take care of them and their family and their family's assets to make sure that everything isn't just lost.
[00:08:58] Another thing that we often recommend, too. I mean, it sounds like this person, just like in our family, a lot of time was wasted, unfortunately, a lot of energy was wasted.
[00:09:08] Emotional and physical energy was wasted after the passing of the person because of just trying to gather together what they have and where they have it. So for that reason, we recommend that everyone have a fireproof, waterproof, especially waterproof in Florida, where we have hurricanes box where you maintain all of your important documents. You're going to keep deeds, title insurance policies. You're going to keep life insurance policies.
[00:09:38] You don't have to keep every bank statement in there, but at least having the latest bank statement or at least the first page of all your bank statements and investment accounts, having those in there, so that if someone has to go looking for what you have, they can find it. Credit card statements, having at least the first page of each one of those in there, you're probably gonna have the same credit card all year. So if you just keep, you know, from January, put the first page of your first statement from that year in there, at least everybody goes, okay, he's got 27 credit cards, mortgage statements, he's got two mortgages.
[00:10:13] You know, they can. They can figure these things out quickly without having to go tearing through all of your legal documents everywhere you have them. So it's definitely something that you'll. You'll want to just sort of gather in one, keep them all together, all your legal documents together. Now, one thing that a lot of people don't think of is electronic, because if you're like me, you get all of those statements I was talking about, you get them electronically, and they come into your email. So someone needs to be able to get into your email. Someone needs to be able to get into your Facebook and your Instagram and your TikTok and everything else that you have. They have to be able to get into all your electronic accounts, all your electronic subscriptions, because when they get those credit card bills, they're probably going to see all these different subscriptions. You have to Netflix and Hulu and HBO Max and Paramount plus and Peacock and, you know, just everything else that you've got out there. So they're going to need to be able to cancel those. So one of the things that we often recommend is a good password program, password protection program, for many reasons. Number one, they generate automatic passwords for every site that you go to, so you're not using the same password all your sites. Number two, if a password is compromised, they usually tell you, hey, this password has been compromised in a data leak somewhere on the Internet. So you need. Need to change it, and you can change it quickly. But the biggest thing that you can do with those password programs is you can set a, what I call a deadman switch so that if no one accesses that for a certain amount of time, and you can do this with your social media accounts as well. If no one accesses that for an amount of time, you can set that time, maybe 30 days, it may be 60 days, it may be 90 days. But if no one accesses it during that time, it will Send an email to your digital guardian, your digital conservator you have named, and it will send an email to them saying, hey, so and so has not logged into their account. You are their digital conservator. If they are gone, you know, please click here for access to their accounts and then they will click. And now they get, they take the steps and they get into your account. So they can shut them down if that's your wish. They can archive them, they can turn social media pages into memorial pages for you, whatever you want done, but it gets them in to all of that for you.
[00:12:32] I know Icloud has this. I believe Android has it through Google Chrome, all the password protection there. They have deadman switch capabilities.
[00:12:45] And it's definitely something to think about and to keep in place. A lot of times you're going to name your spouse first and then if not your spouse, then the next person down the line who you trust, who has some technical savvy, who can get into your accounts and cancel subscriptions.
[00:13:02] I mean, really, if they cancel credit cards, the subscriptions are going to fall anyway because they're going to try to charge the credit card for the renewal of the subscription. They won't be able to do it. So those are pretty easy. But the big thing is, do you want all of that Instagram history you've put up there to just be gone, or do you want to turn it into a memorial page? Do you want it to be downloaded and archived somewhere? What if you've created an AI version of yourself? Do you want that destroyed or do you want to keep on living beyond you? Things like these are considerations that a lot of our clients don't think about. And while they don't think of those things, that's definitely something that when we meet with our clients, it's definitely something we bring up with them. Also, pets need to be thinking about. I mean, people think about their things and their, their, their children and their homes and their spouses, but they forget about their pets. A lot of times you need to think of, well, what happens to my dogs? What happens to my parakeet? Some, some certain parakeets live to be 99 years old. You know, how are they going to be passed to someone you trust and know? Will they get a trust? Will they have money set aside for them? So these are things that you need to think about. And again, we trigger these thoughts with our clients when we meet with them during our initial design consultation. So it's just some of those things you just need to be really thinking about as you're thinking of your estate plan and making it easy.
[00:14:29] Those folks that you leave behind, so they're not wasting a lot of time, energy, emotional and physical and money, they're losing money because they're not able to work while they're having to deal with all of this stuff for you.
[00:14:40] You don't want to burden them with that. So how can you make things as simple and straightforward as possible? Like this Redditor was asking about to make things as easy as possible and again, meeting with a lawyer to trigger all the thoughts of everything you need to get together. Having all your documents a nice in a nice simple spot and then also having that electronic box where you've stored all the passwords where someone can access those automatically. We'd love to help you out. If you need anything, please give us a ring. Until next time, click like and subscribe because we've always got tips like this coming along from time to time and we'd love to help you out. 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.
[00:15:28] Until next time, keep aspiring to a better life.
