Wealth Gap Warriors Podcast Episode 15. Evelyn Suero - Immigration Attorney

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Welcome back. This is Luis Barajas, host of Wealth Gap Warriors. And today we have with us a treat, actually, someone that I reached out to, someone that I worked with before, Evelyn Suero in Miami, Florida, who has been an advocate and a champion also for Latinos in small business, working with women in estate planning, helping them protect their assets. And based on everything that's going on right now in the United States, I reached out to her because I think that she is a center of influence and someone who actually is helping our communities out. And so hopefully you'll pay attention and you can share this podcast with a lot of other Latinos that are going through some really difficult moments right now. And so welcome, Evelyn. I would love for you to give us just an introduction of where you come from, why you got into law, how you ended up, because I know you're not from Miami originally and the people that you're working with and helping with and some of the work that you do before we get into some of the most difficult questions that we've got going on in the United States right now.

Oh, great. Yeah, thanks for having me, Louis. I'm really, I feel really honored to be doing this because as you know, this is our topic that's really near and dear to me. Basically, my background is I was raised in New York City. You know, the melting pot. A story I tell my friends is, you know, we all helped each other growing up. I didn't come from, you know, I came from humble beginnings. And, you know, the immigrant families, the poor families, we'd starve without each other. And so that's, I think that's a part of the story that doesn't get told. But I would be remiss not to tell it because I wouldn't be here without many of those families that I love who are near and dear to me. And, you know, I studied hard. You know, my father is a legal immigrant. My mom's Puerto Rican. My father's Dominican. And, you know, they always instilled in me to study really hard. And I studied my way up to the Ivy League law school. I went to UPenn Law, and I lived in Pennsylvania for a few years. And I kind of got involved a little bit with the immigrant community there who are super hardworking farm workers, the best, nicest people you'll ever meet. And after that, I decided to move to Miami to practice law. So I've been in Miami about, say, 15 years at this point. And in the beginning, I practiced a lot of estate planning. So I did A lot of work with actually a lot of international clients. I worked for tax attorneys, so we had a lot of international clients and I did all their estate planning. And then I moved into business, international business. And when I started my firm about eight years ago, I decided to continue focusing on business and with foreign clients. But I also do, and as you all know, I do entertainment work as well because I'm very passionate about the entertainment industry. But something about the entertainment industry is that obviously immigration touches upon that and that's something that is very real here in South Florida. These are issues that are affecting all families. And I find that I couldn't do continue practicing business and entertainment without adding an immigration layer to it. So I do help my clients with business immigration issues, such as obtaining visas for their.

Valued employees. Perhaps they are multinational companies. We know a lot of our clients have businesses in Colombia or Mexico and then they move here to either, you know, do something in the entertainment industry or, you know, pursue some investments. So it, it runs the gamut. But that's, you know, ultimately it's, it's about helping entrepreneurs and creatives, you know, start their life, launch their businesses and really just protect their assets as best as we can. And that's sort of like a really quick summary of my background.

Great. Fantastic. That's amazing background, by the way, and especially for Latinos that are here in the United States trying to just better their lives, Right? And we all tell Latinos that if they want to build wealth, entrepreneurship is the way to go. And what people don't know is they realize that they have to set up the proper corporate structure. They got to do things right. And having you work with them is what sets it, you know, sets them apart from other people. Now let's get into what's kind of what's going on right now. What is your take? Now we're going to talk about not professionally, you personally is how do you feel about what's going on right now? Because here I will share with you that I'm in Santa Ana, California, one of the most highly densely populated Mexican, Mexican American communities, Spanish speaking in the United States. And we're seeing ICE raids, we're seeing people being stopped, we're seeing US citizens that are Latino looking like me being stopped and asked questions. And so there's been a lot of fear. And we also know that there have been families already that have been hurt where they've been taken families and they've deported them. But I have worked with some of these families where I have worked with them. For 30, 40 years, they've been here. Maybe they got here on a visa that expired. They built businesses, they purchased properties, they sent their kids to the best colleges, and they've just kind of blended in, right? And they've been doing everything, paying all their taxes, filing all. Every year. And all of a sudden, now they've been deported. And so there's been a lot of fear, uncertainty, anxiety. I know that my wife, Angie, has had a hard time sleeping. She's really right now on edge because of everything that's going on, but. Born and raised in the United States, went to ucla, got my MBA at Claremont Graduate School, study with Peter Drucker, First Latino on the national board of the fpa, First Latino currently on the board of the cfp. And I am walking around with a passport because I don't even know if I will be detained. I know I'll be deported, but I don't know if I'm going to be detained. Right? And so it has gotten to the point where.

I've been trying to stay away from the politics of it and just say, we got to deal with what we got to deal with. But it's gotten to a point where, um, it's beyond. It's crossed the line. Well, how's it going in Miami? What do you. What are you sensing? What are you guys hearing out there?

There's a lot of fear here. I don't. I mean, I don't know if it's as intense as. As what's going on in south Southern California, but it's definitely. I mean, I think there are some neighborhoods where there's a lot of. Of ICE presence. Um, we kind of like, you know, share information amongst each other. It's like, don't go to the Walmart in Hialeah, you know, because there's, you know, there's cars there. And it's something that. It's very uncomfortable for me because I think the. What we're hearing or how the way they're conducting the raids and so forth, it really opens the door to racial profiling, which, you know, I thought we were, you know, getting away from. I thought that, you know, the color of your skin, if you worked hard, you know, no one would to judge you on that. And I think that the way that they're carrying out these raids and who they're targeting is. Is adding to that, to missing from disinformation about who is legal, who is illegal, who we may be, daca, who may have not been born here, et cetera, even amongst you Know, honestly, my own colleagues, it's something that I do, you know, I don't carry my, I used to carry my password. I remember years ago, there was a similar uptick in immigration. Something like 20 years ago, I was living in Pennsylvania and I used to carry my passport. And I don't, I don't anymore because I'm like, if I haven't paid my dues by now as a licensed attorney in three states, I don't, I, I can't, there's nothing else I can do. I can't prove myself. So if I get detained, if, if my perfect English on my bar card isn't enough to keep me out of detention, then the American dream just doesn't apply to us. Like, let's be serious. And I don't see that to be inflammatory. Everyone who knows me know, but if I can't eat, at least, you know, walk the street or, you know, not for my son to be detained because, you know, that that's something I also wanted to touch upon in this podcast. You know, my son's special needs and, you know, he's high functioning autistic and that's something like, he may not understand instructions, he may not understand questioning. You know, what hospital were you born in? I don't even think he knows. So, you know, I had to start thinking about that. And, and that's a conversation we need to have about how to protect US Citizen children who may be subject to these types of raids and questioning.

Yeah, that's a wonderful point. You know, I have a grandson and we're creating a special needs department at our firm. And that's a wonderful point. There are people there who will not be able to help themselves and who knows what is going to happen to them. So it's unfortunate of what we're going through. So let's just think about now, the, that right now, at least we're fortunate that we have a lot of education. We've been working in business, we've been working in tax, we've been working, you've been working immigration and the legal side. Let's give the people that are listening to us some tips of what they can do to at least protect. Part of what they did was on the American dream to protect their homes that they've purchased here, their residences, to protect any kind of assets, whether they have money in a savings account, a checking account, whether they have it in the ira. What can people start to do to protect themselves? One, if again, there are people here who have been undocumented, but they've blended in. I've got friends that were born in Mexico. The parents brought them over at the age of 2, 3 years old. They went to kindergarten here, they went to college here. They got a grad school, but again, never got documented for whatever reason, not under the DACA program. And they're fearing for everything that they've worked hard for. So how do we start to protect ourselves, at least from a. From a layer of everything that they work so hard for? So in case they would have to go back to another country temporarily, they would have someone send them the money or sell a piece of property or do what it takes.

I mean, there's. There, there are many strategies. I like to tell my clients, you know, you start thinking about yourself like a foreign investor, you know, you know, I know you've been here 20 years. Maybe let's say you just got here and you went to an attorney and you're like, I'm setting up. I'm thinking about buying a property, or, I bought a property, how do I protect it? Because sometimes the conversation isn't that different, aside from the protections that we want to provide our family, how you protect your assets, the conversation isn't that different with a foreign investor, for example. So if you buy a property and you are. You're allowed to buy foreign property, right? You can be from Mexico and make an investment in the US you can invest in business. The question is now, how do you retain control of that when you're not in the United States, when you go back home? And it's the same conversation. Let's say you buy a bunch of rentals. We know a lot of individuals purchase Airbnbs, so you might want to have a power of attorney for someone to manage those properties, possibly have the right to sell them if necessary, and sign off on that, you know, after you. You direct them to do so. I like to make them limited power of attorneys. There's no reason to do a durable power return over all of your assets if you're just concerned about specific assets, such as real property and business interests and so forth. The business interest, just like I would advise any client, I would say, you know, what's. What does the operating agreement say? Or what do we want it to say, you know, who, who's in control if you're not around? And are you allowed to not be around? Because there are some agreements that say you, if you're not participating in the business, they may be able to, you know, kick you out or buy. Buy you out, and maybe you don't want that maybe you, you've invested in this business. It's a good money making enterprise and you want that for your family. So maybe you want to revisit the terms that are in those operating agreements and so forth so that you can provide another, maybe your adult son or daughter to participate in the business if you are unable to. So you've prepared for that. If I'm here, I'm doing it, but a successor maybe successor, manager, successor, managing member, you would have that person listed on there. Another thing that we all use and you know, you're from very familiar with it, Louis, are trusts. You know, and trusts are great because they're very flexible. You could transfer your assets into them now and then you can have a successor trustee or a co trustee so that they would make decisions. The only danger for that is that if you get deported, you run the danger of having it be deemed a foreign trust. And there are a lot of tax consequences to that. So you want to make sure at that point that you're drafting the trust with a very competent estate planning attorney who will put provisions in there so that the US person has controlling decisions over the trust. And that's very fact specific but it's able to be done because a lot of our clients, you know, have people living here who are residents or US citizens. So it's not hard to find someone that you could, you know, trust and put as the, as the trustee so that, so the trust is good because you can have your home even while you're here. You're not going to lose certain, you know, homestead or tax benefits. You can put your home in the trust, you can put your business interests in the trust, you know, depending on certain limitations. And your bank accounts can be titled in the trust and you could still run your bank account. It'd still be in your name as trustee because you're the trustee, but at least you have that control.

Regarding bank accounts. You know, a lot of my clients like to have either really robust online services with their banks so that they can, you know, manage assets from anywhere, or you want to have a bank that has branches in your country. Maybe you want to start looking into those, you know, brand banks that are international so that you can have an ATM when you need, you know, go to an ATM when you need to, so that you can, you know, reduce the fees incurred inter in the money transfers so that you can wire transfers or someone in the US can wire transfers to you. Just while, you know, while all this is all figured out and you know, hopefully There'll be a solution in the future, but that way you have, you know, your business interests and your financial interests are, you know, ongoing and. And protect it.

Yeah. So let's take a step back here, because most of the people that do listen to us, even though, you know, in the Latino community, especially the more of not the wealthy community.

These words where we talk about trust, they've never heard of them. Right. And especially if they're coming, like, from. Exactly. Like from Mexico, where in Mexico they use the testamento. Right. They barely ever really use the fide comiso, the trust over there. These are the past assets here. A lot of people will get wills done, and there's confusion here in the United States. They get a will done, and they think that if they pass, that property will pass through their children now. And then there's different types of trust, because even when we have a client that has a trust and we're opening an account at the bank, it's a revocable living trust. The banker's asking us for the federal ID number of that trust. We go, no, it's a revocable living trust. It's under the individual. And the banks here are asking us for the ein number for. For that trust. And we explain to them, no, it's a revocable trust. These are bankers who are doing this all the time. And they're even confused and don't even know. And I have to then educate them. So let's take a step back now. For the people that are listening to us is, I'm here. I've been here 30 years, worked hard, kind of retired. My wife and I have two or three kids. We have our casita in Miami. We have our casita here in Santa Ana, East Los Angeles. And I've had it under my name now. And I fear maybe that if I may be deported.

It'S like I have to do something that I can leave it to my children, but also I can pass. If I go back to Mexico, I can pass. And if I pass, how do I transfer that? So explain to us just kind of, what is a trust in the small, simplest terms?

And how does it work? Because, again, I go back to. It's so foreign to people. If we were going to explain it to our grandmother and how it works without even naming the word trust, how would you explain it?

I would say that we know what trusts are instinctively. We've been doing it probably all of our lives. If you've ever handed someone, someone 100 bucks, you say, hold on to this for Me until Jackie comes to your house tomorrow and she'll pick it up. You've given that person money in trust for the beneficiary for Jackie, who's going to pick it up tomorrow. And so trust can be formed orally or, you know, with written documents. So really a trust is a contract. A trust is a contract that says between the person forming the trust and the trustee, the person that they want to do the activity of the trust. So what happens is that a person, you're you, you form the trust and say, I'm going to put all these assets under the title of this trust. Pretend it's the hundred dollars that someone needs to hold for Jackie. I'm going to put all these assets and then trustee, you're going to sign and agree to do with these assets what I ask you to do. Now, for a living trust, it's normally, you're normally the trustee, right? The initial trustee. That's why it's called a living trust. So you're telling basically yourself, I'm going to run these assets in this way for my benefit during my life and then after my death. I want the successor trustee, the next person that I tell to manage my trust. I want them to handle and hand out or distribute my assets to my beneficiaries. What's nice about our trust is that you can put provisions in there that hold the trust's assets back if certain milestones haven't been met. For example, we brought up special needs. You don't necessarily want to give a special needs child or even adult a ton of money and assets and business interests that they can't handle. So in the trust you can put provisions and say, hey, I'm no longer here, but successor trustee, who can be your spouse, your adult child, anybody could be the successor trustee. Hey, person, don't give it directly to my special needs child or beneficiary, hold it and maybe put it in a special account for special needs or use the funds to pay for their treatment, pay their, pay the home cost, buy a home for them, pay their travel. And it's not just special needs. You can also have provisions that say, don't give the, the funds to my adult children until they graduate college. So even for a US Citizen, a trust has a lot of benefits in terms of controlling what happens to your assets during your life as well as when you are no longer around. I like trust because they also can avoid expensive guardianship proceedings if all your, if the majority of your assets are in the trust and God forbid you're ever becoming capacitated, you would have your successor, trustee, able and empowered to continue running your assets and applying for certain benefits that you may need. And what's nice is that it's a little less.

Drastic as a power of attorney, because that trust delineates precisely what you want them to do. It's a contract. Sometimes the power of attorney can be too broad. So, you know, there's pros and cons to each of these. It always depends on, you know, what the extent of your assets are, how much protection you need, who you know do that you trust, who you know, who you don't mind giving power over to. Could be a spouse. Give them, you know, typically a durable power attorney. But, you know, there are alternative.

You know, assets and things that you can. I'm sorry, there are alternative choices that you can make in terms of your planning to. To protect. But when I was going to ask you, Louis, you asked. You said something about if a client wants to protect their assets. What. What are we protecting them from? So are we protecting them?

Well, here, let me. Let me. Let me bring you loss. Yeah. Let me just. Let me just say. So here's what I want to do right now is talk about. Because what I'm getting and what they're reaching out to me, especially right now, somehow, TikTok's becoming really very good for me and that we're getting a lot of questions being asked on TikTok and saying, hey, you know, I don't want to say that I'm undocumented now, but if I can, you know, can the government seize my assets if I'm undocumented? Right. One of the things that I said before was, now you can be a foreigner and have assets here. They don't seize your assets. You can, you know, they get. They open up an llc, they buy a piece of property, they open up businesses here. They don't seize their assets. It's only if, you know, there's suspicious behavior that they might seize your assets. But right now, it seems like all bets are off. Right? Everything's off. And so people are wondering, like, what can I do right now? If I have a business, if I have a piece of property now, I can put it into the trust, and if, you know, and then I can do a power of attorney. But what is your take right now on what's going on? That people are saying, well, can they seize it? And if they seize it, can I protect it? Do I move my. My banks back to my country? I. You know, what are you right now, when people are coming to you and asking you, what can I do to protect against what's going on, not just from a legal point of view, but even for people having access or knowledge of what I have. Now, we know that you can't hide your assets. You have to report your assets here especially, you know, and we know that we have to do things in a legal way. But are there ways that. There are. That rich people do to hide, not hide their assets? I don't want to say hide. That's not. That's the wrong word. Where they protect their assets, where they add layers, where it's difficult to. For people to sue them or the government to seize it or find out if it's them, what can people do?

Yeah, you hit it right in the head. Because I was thinking, oh, my rich clients do this. And it's not only legal. I mean, there's a whole area of law called asset protection.

Right.

And what you do is you. You can have an irrevocable trust owned by a Delaware LLC and all these layers. And, you know, when you have.

Beneficiaries, maybe you put the trust for the beneficiaries of your family, sorry, your children or, you know, different members of your family, you've kind of removed it from your name. You, you know, you can put, you can put an independent trustee who is not related to you, and that person basically can make distributions for health, you know, education and maintenance. And basically, you've at least protected that piece of, of your asset because you've removed it from your individual name. And something that you brought up that's really important that people need to be aware of is that they're going to start implementing penalties. Right. If, if they realize that you're here without authorized stay. I mean, this is something we saw on the. I believe on the USCIS website. You know, I think it's like a thousand dollars per day or something like that. So they can prove that you're. You're illegally. And you stay. After an order of removal, they can start imposing that. And they know that you have assets. That's why they're doing it. They know you got property and everything. So, you know, you might want to start thinking about protecting them. And if you're comfortable transferring some of the assets now. Okay, so let's be.

So let's be. You know, to make something powerful, you want to make it practical. Right. And so is this something that, again, even though. Here's the thing, even though Latinos, for example, in Boyle Heights, where I grew up, in like my father, who owned two commercial properties and his home. And he has, you know, my dad's, you know, a US Citizen here, but, you know, he started, he came here to the United States, started a business when I was around 11 years old, and then he bought a building and then he bought my grandmother's house. Then he bought another piece of property, then he bought another piece of property. And now at this stage now my dad's retired and sold all his assets right at this point. But at, at that point, you know, it's, it's. He still wasn't wealthy enough. Even though he owned the properties, they were barely paying for themselves. Even though he had his, you know, his home, even though he had a business, he had a lot of assets, he'd worked really hard, but he wasn't super wealthy. But at the end of the day, the question is, could my dad got, could he afford to go to an attorney to be able to create a irrevocable trust and get an ein number and have to file a tax return now for that, and then, you know, open up the Delaware Corporation and then move those assets? I mean, what are we talking about? Because when I do that for our clients and I find them the estate planning attorney that's going to do them here in Newport Beach, California, and it's outrageous fees, right? And these people are still kind of, they've got assets, but they're not wealthy. They're better off. They may be wealthy down the road 10, 20, 30 years from now, but they're not wealthy. How does someone right now, who is right now in this community or our communities, who's not part of the top 5 or 10% of the wealthiest people or income earners, how do they protect themselves? Are there places where they can get this done? Are there attorneys also? Right now I've spoken to three or four attorneys, immigration attorneys, and they are so swamped and overwhelmed. And to find bilingual.

Estate planning attorneys, it's been really, really complicated. I mean, I called for a client I was searching in Texas and I called the law firm of. I'm making this one up. But it's true. I called the law firm of Gutierrez, Hernandez and Sanchez, and I said, can I speak? You know, is Gutierrez bilingual? No. Sanchez bilingual? No. Whatever. Because in Texas, the parents told their kids, don't speak Spanish. You need to speak only English, so that way you can be successful. And then also there's no racism against you. Right. But that's out the door now. How can the average person out there who, like, I Said has worked hard, has bought their home and has their small business can afford, or who do they go to for help? And if they're going to for help, what do they look for? Because also, I know I'm giving you a lot of questions, but at the same time, also, in One of the TikToks that I put out there, I said, hey, go out right now and get a financial power of attorney, a durable power of attorney, a restricted financial power of attorney, and you can go online pretty much and get it done. It's very simple. Um, go to a notary and get it completed. You can go to, like, the legalzoom.com, the rocketlawyer.com there's other sites. And you know, the notary's gonna cost you maybe 30 bucks, 40 bucks, whatever, it's not gonna cost you much. And you can at least have a power of attorney in case something does happen. You can do that yet. And somebody writes to me, hey, I just called this service and they're charging $2,500 for a power of attorney, a letter for a power of attorney. And I said, no, that can't be right. They're probably charging you for an estate plan, maybe they're discounted estate plan. And they're doing the trust, the will, the durable power, advanced healthcare directive and everything else. And so they said no. And so I said, send me the information. So I said, email me the information. So I called basically, like as a shopper called, and I asked questions. They were charging $2,500 to do the power of attorney. So during these times, they're also really people in our own communities who are taking advantage of our own people that are in dire straits. So give us more of consumer advocacy tips. Where can we go if they can't afford it? Because also, you know, attorneys are not. They've also gone to college, gone to law school, have a lot of school debts and have office to pay. And so, like, they can't be giving the work away for free as well. So they have certain fees that they have to bill. But there's some people who can't maybe afford those fees. Where do they go right now? How do people get help and. And what do they look out for?

Yeah, that's, that's. I mean, it's, It's a tough question, but it's, it's actually, it's reality. Because, I mean, I know a lot of people that don't go to attorneys, right? Like you said, they do it themselves. They do a lot of things Themselves. And.

I always say, at minimum, get a consultation if you can't afford, like, the entire thing, try to find someone that you can get a consultation from and just have that conversation, even if you can't afford the documents through them. I think people are, you know, I'm really willing to do, you know, I'm not saying they'll be free. I don't know if maybe a hundred bucks, whatever, but they, they may be willing to have a conversation with you. I know I do. The. What I see a lot of people doing. The first question you were, you were asking about, like, if you have a lot of assets but you don't necessarily want to do irrevocable trust. Yeah, I mean, I didn't, I didn't mean to say that that was the only, you know, thing that people can do. But really the bottom line is, is if you want to really protect your assets in terms of not being seized or, you know, having some, some kind of penalty put on them or lean. So you would remove them from, from your name just like anybody does. So I have clients here who, they're thinking about starting certain types of businesses. And these are businesses that are very litigious. Right, that could, you know, like, you know, you can get sued a lot like a doctor or some, some other, you know, career. And they say, you know, I don't want to have all these assets in my name or properties. And what they do is they, they'll do deeds. It's just, you know, filling out. So it's like something your dad can do or he had a bunch of properties, he can just have, you know, deeds done. And some title companies will do that for you. Really, when you, when you hire an attorney, you're paying them for the legal advice. I mean, that's really it. And, and yes, unless it's, I mean, if it's a complicated document, you're paying them for their, for the time to prepare that, but you're, you're really paying for the information because anybody could prepare a deed for you, but that might not be the right thing for you. For example, you don't want to transfer a property to a minor. Yeah, I know it's tempting. I know. You know, somebody could tell you, oh, you can have a life estate, so you can live there, but just in case anything happens, it will go to your son.

Then you have to open up a guardianship because now you have a minor owning all this property. So that might not be ideal. That's why I, at minimum, recommend the revocable trust because at least you can move those assets and have a trustee. It doesn't have to be an irrevocable trust with a Delaware, you know, llc.

You know, the reality is, and I know people, this is difficult times and I know everything's expensive, but you know, a lot of people pay thousands and thousands of dollars to, you know, immigration attorneys. I think this is having a decent estate plan is worth it. If you can do 20, like you said, 20, usually it's 2500 for a basic estate plan. If you can do that, that is, is worth it. It's worth it, every dime. And you can at least protect a lot of your assets, not necessarily from seizure, but at least you can protect them if you, if you get deported and you, you have someone managing the properties. So like you said.

Well, let me stop you there though. So let me stop you there. So again, because you're mentioning the minors and again I go back to if people are listening to us and they all have kids or you know, have grandkids, have kids that have kids.

When it comes to that, I'm going to share with you what I have seen as a financial planner in the Latino community where I see a lot of single mothers and they have bought life insurance policies and they name their children as beneficiaries. And I tell people, look, if you pass away and you have a, a half a million dollar term life insurance policy and you've named your 6 year old or your 10 year old son or daughter as a beneficiary, they're not going to get the money right away because the problem is no insurance company is going to give a $500,000 check to a 10 year old. And so there's going to be a probate process, right. If they haven't done a trust. What I'm seeing right now also is that there are parents who are walking into here in California they use escrows and, and you know, back in Miami we use attorneys and title companies, right? But here they'll go to an escrow office and somebody says, well just add your, your daughter on title to the property or your children on title to the property. Something happens. Now they're owners as well. Well, they may be teenagers, they may be driving and also not have insurance. And, and they might go after that property if something were to happen or if again they're minors, they can't. And, and so what happens is another big problem is that if right now, like my dad, who's maybe had a property for 30 years and he adds his son to that property. You know, I think I take on the basis the same price that my dad bought that house with, that he bought it for 30,000. Now it's worth 800,000. You know, there may not be a step up. And so again, I go back to as an attorney and on the estate planning side, what are the biggest.

Mistakes that you see that Latinos have done when it comes to estate planning or leaving things to their children that they need to know right now so they can get it, or they don't make the same mistakes or they correct those mistakes. Because I see them all the time. When they come to me, I look at, like I said, I can look at the life insurance policy. I said, oh, shoot, you named your 12 year daughter. And I go, who else am I going to name? I don't trust anybody. What do you see and what are some of the biggest mistakes that you're seeing right now?

So much to unpack here. So I.

I just want to be clear about one thing. Not everyone's going to need to remove assets from their name. Like I said at the very beginning, if you get deported, you're still allowed to have your business interest and so forth, right? You just want to make sure there's someone here to manage it, either through a power of attorney or a trust. I just want to make that clear because I don't want people to think I got to figure out how to get assets out of my name. That's a very specific circumstance. But if you get, you get an order removal and you leave your zone penalty, okay? Now I'm running my businesses like a foreign investor. I'm in another country, I'm doing it. I'm bringing that up because the way that the mistakes I see are typically from.

People who are undocumented just as much as people who are documented. And here's why. And I think you've seen this too. So, you know, a lot of people, like I said, come here, they make investments or they start their lives and they have a lot of assets and it's time to decide, okay, do I transfer this to someone or do I just do an estate plan so it'll transfer when I pass away? They don't think about estate tax. And that is huge because there are not the same exemptions from estate tax for a US citizen. It is not the same for a non US Citizen. So if that, if you have, if you are not documented, you live here, I don't care how long you've lived here, and you have all these assets doing any Kind of transfer is going to trigger that. And like the transfer tax. And even if we do an estate plan for you now, we got to consider, oh my God, I, my kids might face a 40% estate tax when I die because I wasn't a US citizen or legal resident.

Yeah. And hold on, just before you go on. So just the people that are listening to us, because sometimes, you know, when I first started out, I would hear estate tax, I would hear like the state of California tax. No, it's a state like a death tax. After you pass away, if you're, if you have a certain value net worth over a certain amount. And that can change almost every year depending on again, it used to be at One point like a 3 million, I think it's close to $14 million. Anything above that. But they're trying to bring that number down. So you got to stay on top of it. But if you die and you have assets more than a certain dollar amount now you have to pay 40 cents on the dollar over that dollar amount. But if it, if you're a foreigner, it's almost very little. I think it's right. It's 60,000. $60,000. So if you have an account here for $100,000 and you pass away the first 60,000, there's no tax on that. I'm going to call it a death tax so that they don't get confused for right now an estate tax. Anything above that is taxed at 40%. So that makes a big difference whether you're a foreigner or you're a citizen as well. So I'm sorry, I'm going to let you continue, but I just wanted to make sure that people are kind of sort of straight.

Yeah, yeah, I didn't remember that. You know, I just throw these terms.

No, no, that's fine. Yeah, yeah.

But you know, there's also transfer tax, there's also gift tax. So it's not like, oh, I'm going to avoid the death tax and just give them out, give them away. Now hold on. You know, I've seen people get into big trouble because of these, you know, transfers. And like you said, you might be giving away the right to have a step up in basis and all these capital gains benefits and so forth. So, you know, that's a big one and it's a complicated one in and of itself and a whole topic. But you know, that's one of the mistakes I see is not considering that. And just abruptly and impulsively let me get these assets out of my, like I Said, you don't have to do that right now unless you, you know, you, you run the risk of penalties or something like that. You can, you know, retain the assets and. And if you get deported, you just find someone to manage them. Another mistake I see, like you mentioned, is.

You know, in transferring, just doing deeds. I see a lot of deeds. And, you know, people don't realize that these deeds, you know, they have a lot of power. Sometimes if you transfer it, a deed in the name of even an adult responsible son, he can have a car accident or something and some judgment against him. And now you've lost, you both, lost a home. So we don't necessarily want to do that. We want to be very thoughtful about every step of this process. We want to, you know, be thoughtful about who we put in charge of things and how we take care of our children. You brought up the life insurance. I've seen some people, you know, just put a custodial account instead of giving it directly to their kids or say this person as custodian for my son. And now, at least in Florida, you can open. Once the.

They die, the insurance company will cut the check to the custodial account. And so now the custodian has to open a bank account for that child, and then they're the custodian they ban into the account. So it has to be obviously someone you trust, but there are ways to do it and still benefit your children.

I think. Yeah, those are the biggest.

Yeah.

So we're kind of running out of time. I think we're going to have to do a part two, to be quite honest with you, just because as these things go along. So I want to share the people that are listening to us. Look, we've talked a lot. We've discussed a lot of big concepts, We've discussed a lot of big ideas. We've used some big words. But I want to share with you that right now, throughout the country, there are a lot of, when I say children, I'm adult children like me, of immigrants who were born and raised here, who went to school here, who became lawyers, who've become CPAs, who've started their own businesses helping other Latino business owners, or maybe if they're not, they're willing to help out. Right now, this is kind of complicated, and you need to reach out to people who are willing to help you. And if you don't know, don't go to the cornerstone person who didn't get the education, who doesn't really know what's going on, who's Going to take advantage of you, who has nothing to lose if something happens to you. And Evelyn is a lawyer. If she were to do terrible things, they would disbar her. She has a lot to lose. She's on top of it. She's, you know, she's dealing with clients. She's going to the continuing education conferences. So am I. And we're not the only ones, right? You can reach out to us for sure. But throughout the country, there are people all over the country that are Latino professionals. You know, you can look through LinkedIn, you can do Google searches, they're bilingual. But right now, not to mention, yeah, there's a lot of nonprofit organizations who are providing a lot of also legal work at discounted rates. And actually some of these nonprofits hire these high priced attorneys who are doing some pro bono work in these places and they offer certain hours, they'll do pro bono work per month. And they go into these nonprofits and do the legal work there. The same thing for the financial planning profession, the Certified Financial.

Planning Board, also a lot of the CFPs do pro bono work as well. But what I'm saying is that we don't want to also react and make hasty mistakes or knee jerk reactions to what's going on. We want to take a step back, take a deep breath, take a look at everything that we have, explain it to somebody who knows what's going on and help us. Because like you said, you don't need to do the Delaware Trust and this and that. It could be just a very simple solution to protect your assets. But at the end of the day, you know, the people we're talking to, the people that are not being deported, people that are staying here, you need to take action. I can share with you that every single person that I meet, every Latino that I work with, does not have an estate plan. It's rare. If I see it, you need to get it done anyway. If you've got children, if you've got property, you got to get it done. What are you waiting for? If during this time you're not going to do it, then when are you going to do it? I go back to this is the time to, if this isn't pushing you. Now, again, avoid the knee jerk reactions, avoid the anxiety. You don't have to pay a lot of money and then, you know, get a second opinion, get a third opinion. Okay? And there are people, hire people like Evelyn who will do a consultation for just, you know, a one hour fee. She'll tell you what the fees are. In advance. The people should tell you what they're going to bill you in advance for an hour, two hour consultation where they can look at kind of everything and kind of guide you. We have a concept at our firm called Turn the Turtle, meaning that when our staff gets a call and maybe we can't help them because we're not immigration attorneys, I'm not a lawyer, we can refer them and we refer them out to other attorneys that can help them or organizations that can help them. So reach out. There's plenty of help out there. It's not like if we were 30, 40 years ago. A lot of the kids of immigrant parents grew up here and have gone to some of the best colleges in the country and are willing to help at this point. But let's do things the right way. Let's take time and again, I promise you we're going to do a second part with Evelyn. We're going to wait. Evelyn and I got to wait another couple of weeks because everything's changing on a daily basis. They keep putting out new stuff and you know. Yeah. And so as we start getting more information.

We'Ll get back to you. So please share this with all your friends. This is going to be up on YouTube. This is again on Spotify. This is on Apple. You can go to the website louisbarajas.com you can download it from there. Share this podcast we're going to do a part two in the next week or two and get you caught up to what's going on. In the meantime, send us questions. Send Evelyn, send me questions so we can do the part two and that we can be, you know, we, again, we cannot give you specific advice because again, this is a podcast. We, you know, we cannot give you specific.

Impossible.

It's. Yeah, it would be impossible.

Fact intensive.

Exactly. So we have to do just kind of generalities and. And that'. So everyone is different. Again, on this podcast, we're not giving you legal advice for you, we're not giving you financial advice for you. We're just making you aware of concepts, of terms, of ideas, of things that you may do once you see a professional. Okay. Ideally, you want them to be an attorney, a licensed attorney in the area of which you need help. If they're immigration attorney. Right. A specialist in immigration or estate planning or business planning. I say everyone needs a financial plan because everyone already has one. But if you're going to see financial planner, make sure that they're certified. They're a certified financial planner as well. So. All right, so we'll leave you here today. Evelyn, thank you so much. I know that I hit you with so many questions and we could have been here for the next two or three hours, or probably longer, to be quite honest with you. But we're going to do a part two. I'll be talking to you in the meantime, sending you some of the questions in advance, what people are sending us, so we'll be prepared. Thank you very much again, Please share when you get a chance. Go on to my TikTok page, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube page. Go to Luis Barajas. Join our community. Please subscribe to us on YouTube and we'll see you next time. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone.