Office Chats with Linda and Ledly - Beneficiary Deeds. Revocable vs Irrevocable Trusts.

Hey, I am Linda Goodner with L. Jennings Law.

I'm Ledly Jennings.

He is the L. Jennings Law. So last time we did a chat, we didn't really introduce ourselves. So like the whole office. So we're going to do that this time. So Ledly Jennings, can you talk about where your offices are located? How do you get a hold of someone if they have a question or want to make an appointment?

Yeah, our main office headquarters, if you will, is in Magnolia on Main Street. And then we have another office in Little Rock. You can call our number at 501-501-9455 to book an appointment. And basically we do estate planning. So anything that falls under that umbrella, whether it's wills, trusts, power of attorneys, elder law, nursing home planning, that kind of thing.

And sometimes people in Magnolia are confused because we have a 501 number, but if you call that number, it does ring into the Magnolia office and we make the appointments for Magnolia and for Little Rock. There are 4 employees in Magnolia besides Ledly Jennings. I'm one of them. Emily Short works the front desk. She does all the appointments, so she's probably who you're going to talk to. Beth is backup for Emily answering the phone, has duties behind the scenes. And then we also have another lawyer here that works part-time in our office, Cordell. I just wanted to introduce ourselves since we really didn't do that the first time.

Yeah.

All right. And also our office hours are from 8:30 to 4:30 every day, and there's usually somebody here during that whole time.

And Linda, what's your title?

I am Director of Operations, but I probably have other titles that I don't need to talk about. All right, so we are going to talk a little bit about trust today. I don't know, those who are on our Facebook page, which is Arkansas Estate Planning Facebook page, we put a riddle out yesterday and we wanted people to answer our riddle for a chance to win a prize. And the riddle is about trust. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. Can you just talk about briefly what a revocable versus an irrevocable trust is?

Yeah. So the main purpose of a trust in general is to set things up to avoid probate. But there's all kinds of trusts. A revocable kind is the most common, and that just means you can revoke it so you can change it whenever you want. It's yours while you're living. You're in charge and own everything. There is also an irrevocable trust, which is as it sounds, it's irrevocable, meaning you can't revoke it. So it is set in stone basically when you set it up.

And so what instance would somebody want an irrevocable trust that they couldn't change?

Yeah, we do it mostly here for Medicaid planning. You would move assets out of your name, like real estate, into an irrevocable trust. To get ahead of planning for the nursing home care and that kind of thing. We also do it for asset protection. If it's in an irrevocable trust, it can protect your assets from creditors or lawsuits or divorce or anything like that. Sometimes we do it for high net worth estate tax planning. That's less and less common nowadays with the high exemption, but it also can be used for that.

And if someone wanted to plan for special needs? We would do.

Oh yeah, that's a good point too. Special needs, we do special needs trusts which are irrevocable, and that is a way for you to provide benefits to children or adults that have special needs and not disqualify them from government benefits like Medicaid or disability.

Okay, so if you have any questions about revocable or irrevocable trust, feel free to ask us on our Facebook page or give us a call or email us, whatever you prefer to do. The next thing I think we need to talk about a little bit is deed work. If we're doing estate planning, it almost always involves some sort of deed work. Somebody's transferring stuff to their trust, or maybe they need a beneficiary deed. So give us a couple of examples of some of our most common deeds and then explain in particular what a beneficiary deed is.

Yeah, there's all kinds of deeds, warranty deeds, quick claim deeds. Beneficiary deeds. Most commonly you'll see a warranty deed, but one of the ones we use and like to use today is a beneficiary deed. And basically it's a deed that says you own the property while you're living, but when you die, you name someone that you're leaving that property to on the deed. And the benefit of that is it avoids probate, so it keeps you out of the court system when you pass away. And also it can provide protections from long-term care.

Okay. I think the last thing I'd like to talk about is just, can you tell people why you kind of only do certain aspects of the law? Like, why are you doing estate planning and maybe not divorces?

Yeah, I don't like divorces, but really every lawyer chooses a track to specialize in when you get into practice. And why we only do estate planning is because it's complicated and you have to wake up every day thinking about estate planning, stay up to date on the law and really execute it properly for things to get done. So that's why we focus just on estate planning. So if you get arrested, don't call us, but if you need a will or trust, we can handle it.

And we are a stewardship firm. And so it kind of makes sense for us to do estate planning if we're stewardship and we're trying to make a contribution to the community.

Yeah, all about doing the best of what you've been given. And that's what estate planning is. You have to be a good steward of your assets. So that's where our slogan came from.

Okay. I think that's all we've got for today. I'm going to remind you of our phone number, 501-501-9455, and jump on there and tell us if you want to hear chats from Cordell or Emily or Seth or somebody besides us. All right.