Creative Provisions For Your Wealth When You Die - Trust VS Will

Every American should have a revocable living trust. Young or old, rich or poor, kids or no kids, married or single, the trust is your foundation.

What would you rather have? Would you rather get $120,000 in cash from the estate, from your, let's say, parent passes away, or would you rather get a $100,000 Roth IRA? What would you rather have?

I'm gonna take the Roth, please.

The Roth for 100,000. You're gonna give up the 20 grand?

I'm gonna give up the 20 grand you can put in your trust. When I die. Create a charity that puts tennis shoes on kids in the Navajo Nation in Arizona.

Welcome, everyone, to the Main Street Business Podcast. This is Matt Sorenson, joined by the incredible Mark J. Kohler. We're so excited to be with you today talking about your death. It's not exciting.

Maybe not.

Okay, okay. For anyone still listening, we're talking about creative provisions and planning for when you do pass on.

You see, I need you to just, you know, be my communicator when I'm trying to say things that made. That sounded so much more nice than, so you died. You're all gonna die. So we need to say it. Okay. But, yeah, no, I. That's. But, you know, the fun part is the creative. Yeah, I think. Creative.

Yeah.

Because you, all of you have worked so hard to build wealth, build a business, build real estate, build investments, your 401k IRA, whatever. What's going to happen to it when you die? Well, why not come up with some unique provisions to drive your family crazy, then just give them the money. I mean, do the fun part.

Yeah. And I also want to take a step back and think of, like, what impact do you want to leave on the world? Your community, your church, your alma mater, your kids, your business partners and associates. Like, all these things that are important in your life. Like, what are you building for? What impact do you want to leave? Because I'm going to tell you, when you pass on, there's going to be some impact. Yeah. There's even some fun things you get to do while you're still living that could be cool. And I want to talk about those, too, because a lot of people forget that in your state plan is like, we can be doing some things while you're still alive, too, that could be fun, that you can get some benefit and.

Yeah. Kind of build. Build the trajectory, build the plan so it's not a shocker for your kids. Oh, mom and dad felt this way. Well, let's talk about it. I love it and the thing is, some people say, well, when I die, they can do whatever, I'll be dead. Well, okay, do. If you really don't care that your, you know, kid gets hopped up on heroin because you dropped a million dollars in their lap. Fine. You know, I don't know.

I went dark.

That was a little dark. If you don't care that your ex husband or ex wife is spending all their money with their new, you know, then that's fine. See, so I don't know, I think people do care. They just don't know what to do.

Yeah, they get stalled out and it's still make it a priority. But this can be fun and it helps kind of. You know, I think going through this process and thinking of these things, we're gonna give you some ideas, some cool things we've seen clients do from a planning standpoint. And I'm gonna talk about some of the clients that I thought have just like lived a cool life, I wanna say, and just been like really thoughtful about what they're trying to build and pass on.

I don't feel comfortable you talking about me like that.

Well, wasn't attorney client privilege.

Okay, fair enough.

You signed the release.

I have a feeling you weren't talking about me. That was the funny part. Okay, well, for those of you that. For those of you that may have stumbled across this title and thought this is kind of cool, please know this is part of a four part series. It's our legacy month where we talk about kind of this estate planning topic and dying and all the things that are related there too. It's is a topic that many people know they need to deal with. We do it once a year. We have kind of a little special in the law firm we've done for almost like eight to nine years where we give a discount for an estate planning scenario with working with a real lawyer all across the country, making it affordable and tailored to you. So this, this podcast is to help give you kind of some starting points to think about so that when you get on a call with your one of our team members or you talk to your local attorney, you can go in prepared. And so please, I encourage you to. We got one more week next week in this four part series and look back at the last two podcasts and I think you'll find it insightful. We do try to keep it fun and as best as you can with

this topic, as best as you can make dying fun. We try. But here's a couple things we're going to maybe Hit some of the provisions you should have in your trust, which is your main component of this. Things to think about that are creative, that incentivize the things you want. Maybe you want to have a charity, maybe you want to support a charity or establish your own upon your passing or even before. What about gifting ideas while you're still alive? How does that work? Maybe I want to support certain educational or small business needs of my kids or grandkids. What about my family property or estate or these types of legacy things that I want to live on and be kept and used and benefit my family because there's been so many memories created there. So some of those cool things like that I think that can come up for some of these creative ones that I love to talk about.

All right, go. Well, which one's first? You know which I choose one. Or let's.

I'll go.

Let's, let's go.

Let's. Let's hit some couple practical things and we'll build into some of these things. First, first I want to talk about your in your trust.

And let me say this everybody, the rest of this conversation is going to be about having provisions in your revocable living trust. Yeah, we're not going to be dealing with just a will. It's a waste of time. They're too difficult to work with. They get probated by a judge. Family gets to stick their nose into it. Realize that we have encouraged, and this is in the prior last two podcasts, that every American should have a revocable living trust. Young or old, rich or poor, kids or no kids, married or single, the trust is your foundation. So we're just going to say it now. All the provisions we're talking about are integrated with your trust either before you die or take place after you die. So there you go. So provisions.

Sorry.

I just want to say that the

first thing is for any of you that have minor kids in your trust, you need to be careful. Or maybe you've got adult children that

act like minors still or grandkids you

want to grant grandkids too. You want to benefit is we want to think about them inheriting wealth too early. And sometimes your money and wealth can corrupt the people that you love, can make their life worse because they don't know how to handle that type of money or that inheritance. So one of the common provisions we have in ours is looking at the age of that person to determine what are they gonna get a distribution outright. Maybe they're between 18 and 25. They get 1/3, maybe when they hit 25 to 30, they get the next third and a 30 or 35 or whatever.

You can break stages however you want stuff.

Let's do some stages so they don't get it all and blow it. Let's put some little provisions in there so it drips out over time. Now if you've got kids that are in their 40s already and you're like, and you're not going down to grandkids some of those times, you can skip those things. But that's a really common one a lot of our clients pick. And I've had in mind too.

I love it. And just talking about this kid thing, some of you like, well, I don't have kids. Do you have nieces and nephews? Do you have grandkids? So, and here's something Matt's heard me tell the story. It was probably 15 years ago. This woman I met with, she was in her 70s and she was doing her estate plan. She was still working and she was, she was vibrant and had to work. Her husband had passed away and I don't want to say she was a Walmart greeter, but she, she was, it was, it wasn't a high paying position. And we were doing her estate plan and just like Matt said, we said, I go, okay, your kids are 40 or whatever if you die. She had a little life insurance, she had a little retirement account, a little equity in her home and she knew that she needed to take care of this. She goes, I said, just split it three ways. She's like, yeah. And I go, we'll just give it to them because they're, they're in their 40s, you know, I didn't need to give the speech of, you know, they're all going to get hopped up on heroin. And so, so she said, she said, no, don't do that. I said, really? She goes, I don't want to get them to, I don't want them to get any inheritance until they're age 65. I was like, whoa. Wow. And then she started to cry. I started to cry because she said, they don't need the money now. They don't know how hard it's going to be and how scary it is to be in your 60s and not have retirement. I want anything. I have to go to them when they need it the most. They just don't know it. And I was like, oh, oh my gosh. So deep. And so it's not just about teenagers, you know, going to go out and buy a, you know, a Ford F150 Raptor, whatever. It's about what you foresee your children need. So I love that. Anything else on kids? I had another one. Yeah, go ahead.

I like the one about kind of matching. You know, it's almost kind of like this, like the 401k matching formula. And we've done it with our kids and, you know, people to incentivize and encourage that, hey, I'm not going to just give you my wealth, but I want you to go earn it. But I will do some things for you that incentivize. The things I want to, I want to leave on. This is part of my legacy and the impact I can make when I pass on. For example, I'll give you a certain amount of money to start a small business. I'll give you a certain amount of money to buy a home. I'll give you a certain amount of money to get a college education or vocational training or to do church or missionary service. I'll give you. And so there's a wedding. Yeah, a wedding. And so you can kind of say, these are the things. I'm going to just give you some money for, you know, for whatever. But also sometimes it's a. For every dollar you make, you get a dollar from the trust, you know, or whatever the ratio is. But you can kind of tie those things together to try to incentivize some of this. I think some people have, you know, built their wealth and it's, it's whether it's small or large, but it's there, you know, and it. And it. And you want. You kind of feel like you don't want your kids to just like, get it all this windfall. And so that's, That's a great idea. I think, even if even for, particularly for a lot of those ones, like start a business, church or missionary service, buy your first home to be like, you get that right? And that's. Those are like standard ones, I think.

I love it. And those are carrots and I want to give a couple sticks. But again, for some of you that may not have children, think of your nieces and nephews, think of your grandchildren. Let me ask you this. If your grandfather. I'll ask you, Matt, if your grandfather and grandmother had created a trust that said, when Matt goes to college, we're going to give him $20,000, do you think you might have a little more affinity to look up the life of your grandfather and grandmother? Would you feel a little close? Would you be like, wow, who are they? They did that for me.

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

Yeah. And I think many of you out there that are the coolest aunt or grand uncle, leave a little money in a trust provision for your nieces and nephews to go to college. What do you think they're going to, they're going to be like, oh my gosh, I knew that she was the best, I knew that he was the best. And. And they're going to feel you're going to build a bond that allows you to continue to be a leader and make an impact in their lives when you're gone, even if it's just a niece or nephew, you know, you can add these types of provisions.

Yeah. And a lot of times in our provisions when we say college too, it could be like vocational training, it could be a trade. It doesn't have to be like the four year university, you know, and so. And you want to be careful on that because sometimes in like, you know your do it yourself or estate plans, we've seen this all the time, they're always jacked up is they'll be very literal. It's like a four year institution. My kid's going to be, will be an electrician. Yeah. Like they went to a trade school. Like that doesn't. Oh, that. You don't get that.

Yeah, yeah. So you have to go pay for that yourself. Now here's a couple other sticks you. We like to have the reverse in there as well. And we have a couple pages of provisions when we work with a client. Some of you are like, man, I never talked about this with my attorney when I drafted. Let's amend it, let's clean it up. This is what you should be talking about. And it doesn't mean our price is the same to do an estate plan whether you add these types of provisions or not. But some sticks are if they have any drug abuse going on. Seriously, you know, all kidding aside, that money's held at bay until their life's in order. Alcoholism, drug abuse, criminal issues. I've got some, I didn't want to say the classification of these family members that are in jail right now, I don't want to get in trouble but you know, everybody has those family members that really just struggle at adulting. And so you can put provisions that hold back money until their life is in order to. And they could be 40 years old before their life's in order. Who knows?

Yeah. Another important one on that is a creditor protection clause. Basically that says, hey, if you've got a creditor, you know the trust isn't going to pay out the money because by the way, what that money goes, the creditor is going to come grab it. So it's kind of the spendthrift trust clause that's in there that the trustee is going to hold that money until that creditor that debt's resolved.

Yep. I love it. Another one that you might call a stick is that. And there's a couple funny movies. You know, I can't remember if it was. Well anyway I won't mention some of the actors or actresses names but you know, they had to do something to get their inheritance and there's some funny movies out there like that. The Gift I think was one. But I like to put in there that you have to not go get a college degree to get your money, but you have to have maybe done some financial training, gone through a financial course. I love the Dave Ramsey Financial university is a 10 part program. Some of you that have gone on to do some real estate education or some investment education or forex training or maybe you say you don't have to graduate from college, but I want you to take an accounting class or I want you to take this type of class or I want you to read these 10 books. You can put things like that because why dump money on a kid's lap that may not be educated enough to handle it? And you can do that. It's okay.

Yeah, so those are great.

Okay.

I like you got some of the sticks in there.

Okay, so last point I'll make this is on your nieces, nephews, grandchildren. When you're laying in bed at night thinking about this, have a little note app on your phone. Have a yellow pad handy and write these things down. And don't think you have to have all the ideas finished before you draft your trust. Get the appointment made, get, get the trust drafted, put in what you can have your list, the attorney's gonna help put it in legalese, which means it's binding. And then if a year from now you wake up and go, ooh, I wanna add three or four things. Great, we're under 500 bucks to amend a full estate plan. Just add a page here or there and it's not the end of the world. Now you wanna go reinvent the wheel, you know it's gonna cost more, but an amendment's not a big deal.

Yeah, and a lot of those things that we talked about easily amended. Sometimes your age of your kids change, their situation changes. You need to be more specific. You have a kid with special needs or a divorce or even a kid divorce situation or whatever. These are things easily amended just with a simple one page amendment to the trust. So that's the nice thing about it being revocable. Remember this is a revoke living trust. You can change anytime.

Yeah. And you people, this is. We have other podcasts on this just in the last two weeks on what type of trust am I going to do? Make sure you go back and listen to those. We are not a big fan of the asset protection trust as your foundation. All of you are still going to have this revocable living trust. And again, young or old, rich or poor, this is where it's at and very easy to implement. Okay, so other creative provisions.

Well, I want to throw out just a little note here to make sure everybody understands that there are sometimes an estate tax issue where if you do have a large estate, 10 million plus single admits, maybe by 11 now 20 million plus married, where you could be paying federal estate tax. Now in some states you can hit this at a million bucks, you have an estate over a million. There's a few states that are like very punitive. I think Washington and there's some other ones you got to be careful about where you might. You're going to be paying an estate tax to pass this on. But for the most part, if you're under the 10 million, your estate's going to pass on to your loved ones. Whoever may be left without any estate tax worries.

Okay.

It's great for them to inherit it. They get all this step up in basis. There's always great, great little tax benefits for people to receive your stuff when you die. Yeah.

And I love it. And just as a practical example, some of you be like, what, there's state estate tax or state death tax. This is a funny one. When Californians who are sick of California income tax at 13% or whatever, they flee to Seattle. This was a big exodus about, you know, 20 years ago it started and boy, the King county just was like influx of Californians all the way up to Tacoma, Olympia. I mean it was just they got out of state income tax and little did they know with their.com or their whatever or their Hollywood money or whatever they had when they ended up in Washington, the estate tax exemption is only up to a million dollars. So once you die and you're a Washington resident, which you want for state tax purposes, that estate tax comes in and kicks in on a percentage of everything over a million dollars. If I have my calendar here, I could give the percentage. But the point Is when you meet with your advisor at our office, we're going to identify what states have issues, because we want to make sure you're planning for that, and there's strategies you can employ.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, one thing I want to talk about is a nonprofit or private foundation. I think this is something as you're thinking about leaving a legacy and the impact you want to live. You want to have. Live on. I like this to be something you set up during your lifetime, you know, get this off the ground and rolling. I like it kind of because it goes with your estate plan. It's about this legacy you want to live on because this nonprofit can live on past you. And what are the things you value? What's the. The benefit you want to leave to this world? You know, Mark and I, we started a charity, and we're in. We're still in infancy on it, but it's a toddler right now.

Yeah.

You know, but we're.

We're working on it. We needed a babysitter for it.

Yeah.

We need an adoptive parent.

But we were able to set the vision of the things we wanted to make an impact on and things that we valued, which was entrepreneurship and financial literacy. But for you, and I think a lot of people hit this in their estate plan. This thought is, we help clients set up nonprofits and private foundations all the time. But this could be a funding mechanism out of your estate plan. Sure, you might get it off the ground and rolling. You might get it operating and doing the things and the impact you want to make. But upon your passing, it might get a large allocation of your estate. Like the bill and Lynn McGates Foundation.

Yep.

Yep.

And so. And what, this.

They separated. Actually, I don't even know what that is.

I don't know what's going on there. I had someone the other day that was all mad at them for what they're doing with charity.

Geez.

But here, Here. Here's a practical point. You can put in your trust when I die, create a charity that puts tennis shoes on kids in the Navajo Nation in Arizona. Put a million dollars in that trust. I mean, in that nonprofit. And here's what I want it to do. Okay, cool. All right. And so your trustee will make that happen. So that's a creative provision that you can say, create this charity that does XYZ when I die. The alternative, which Matt is saying, just to put it. Say it a different way, is, well, I'll create the nonprofit now, and I'll put in $1,000 and just kind of have a golf tournament and a little 5k run and a little black tie affair once a year. And we'll. Some little things kind of work out the kinks really kind of find your, your feet, five feet with tennis shoes. So subtle, so subtle. But you might get your feet under you and go, oh, okay, this is really a bad idea. I'm going to change the vision of this. I thought it would make more of an impact. It's not. So you can kind of really get that nonprofit kind of functioning at a lower level. And then when you die, you might have some life insurance or some equity here or there or wherever that's going to inject the, the, the rocket fuel to take it to the next level. And so I like Matt's point, you can kind of vet it, get it really humming and then.

And you see this with, you know, we see this with wealthy people. Their names go on buildings and stuff at universities and it even can go in the charity's name. You know, that's the legacy you want to live and the impact you want to make. It's like, you know, a lot of business owners have a lot of business clients, they have a personal brand. Like, what do you want for your personal life and your personal brand from a non profit standpoint, how do you want that to carry on? So just a cool little thing I think can go with your estate plan. And it also, if you are the 10 million or above these, this reduces your estate tax burden because it takes down the value of your estate, the person you're sending to charity.

And this year, by the way, it's 12,950,000.

It's almost at 13 million, adjusted for inflation. We've had some inflation, apparently.

Yeah, apparently. Now another creative provision. Let's come back down to us reality Main street folks. Because some of you are like, I'm not setting up a charity. Holy shit. I can only do this. You know what?

You can make a lot of impact with 100 grand out of your estate. You can, and I'll say this too, find the charity you want to support. It doesn't have to be setting up your own. Find the one you want to support and get involved with that charity. They love knowing that you've made a plan. They call it a planned gift. Usually you've made a plan gift upon your passing for it to go to that charity, whether it's university, church, whatever.

I love it. And I'm sorry, I was going to say something else, but I'm going to stick with this for A minute. One thing, don't. If you say, well, I'm going to leave 100 grand to the charity, but come to. But then you. I know what you're going to think because I met with so many clients over the years, that'll go, well, I don't know what my estate's going to be worth if I give 100 grand away. That could be the bulk of it. And you don't know. So what you do, stick with percentages. You say, whatever my estate's worth when I die, pay the debts, sell everything, blah, blah, blah. Give 10% of it or 20% of it to this charity, 5% to this charity, then take the remaining 60%, split it this way, and then there's this piece. Take that. So you can do percentages. And whether you have a million dollars, 100 grand or 10 million, who knows what it's going to look like? Right. So do percentages and it's a safer bet.

Yeah. And you can put minimums and caps on that 10% to at least be a minimum of 10 grand, but not to exceed 100 grand. Like you can always kind of. This is. You get to write the rules for this. You know, you're like Thomas Jefferson.

You write the rule. Sorry, you name the rules. We write. Yeah, we write the rule book and make sure that no one can get around it. So you just kind of think of what those rules are and we'll write it for you. Okay. Now the next. Bringing it back to Main Street.

Yeah.

A lot of you that may not have children, I'll bet you I do know what, you have a pet. There are so many pets owners in America now. Over 60% of Americans own either a cat or a dog. And who's going to take care of that pet? We don't need to spend a lot of time on this, but the point in your trust is you can appoint a guardian for your pet. You can leave them some. This guardian, some money, and a lot of pets end up at the pound or whatever you want to say, the shelter and hopefully get adopted or they'll be joining up at the pearly gate shortly. But you can get a pet plan in place in your trust and be really creative about it. And this could be horses, it could be livestock, it could be, you know, household pets, exotic pets, whatever, you know, you've got. You got to think of who's going to take care of it because not everybody wants to take care of that stuff. I kind of think it was funny. I was in Maui speaking at the better Life conference with Brandon Turner last week. And we love to, like, go around when we're in an area and kind of look at what are the homes for sale and get on Zillow to see what's going on. And we were down in Lahaina, and this woman was selling her house. Couldn't even believe the price. I'm like, seriously. I mean, this was a dive, and it was, like, millions because it was, like, 100 yards from the beach. And she had all these pet turtles and all these. And all these exotic birds. And she was saying, well, when I sell the house, I'm gonna, you know, give all this stuff away or I'm gonna do this or doing that. And I was, like, thinking, holy crap, if this woman died tomorrow, who knows where these pets are gonna go? And, you know, but it's kind of funny. And so you have to think, where do you want your animals to go? And. And John Dutton would have to worry about this. I mean, yeah, it's a big deal. Beth. Well, Beth had a plan, and then, you know, I'm not caught up.

Don't ruin season five.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Yeah, I won't touch it. Well, you know, there was some different. You know, Jamie had a trust, he drafted, and then, you know, Beth got involved, and, you know, Utah law, Montana law, it's a big deal. You got to watch the show. Okay.

Okay. Well, let's shift gears from pets to retirement accounts.

Ooh, that's weird. You love to talk about that. It's your jam.

Yeah, but in your retirement accounts, this is important. I want to make a couple points on this one is your retirement accounts have what's called a beneficiary designation form, whether this is your IRA or 401k. And in that beneficiary designation form, you're going to say who inherits your account. Now, generally, for those of you who are married, you put your spouse first, because they can do what's called a spousal rollover, and it just goes into their name. And then you put your trust second. And whatever the terms of your trust say is what's going to happen. Now, when you do that, you got to give your IRA or 401, Administrator Custodian, a copy of the trust, because they need to know what the heck the trust says if you're going to list your trust. Now, here's one. And we've had this before. Do not list my estate. Do not list your estate. That means it's going to probate. You got to list your trust. List the Name of the trust. All right, so that will be on the designation. Now, in the trust, I want you to think about this. Who's going to get your retirement accounts? I mean, they could be split up between multiple children or beneficiaries, or it could just be one of them gets it. What would you rather have? Would you rather get $120,000 in cash from the estate, from your, let's say a parent passes away, or would you rather get a $100,000 Roth IRA? What would you rather have?

Oh, I take, sorry, I'm going to take the Roth. Please.

The Roth for 100,000. You're going to give up the 20 grand?

I'm going to give up the 20 grand. I'll go with column A. Yeah, good choice.

All right, that was kind of a trick question. I was trying to trip people up there. But why would you want the Roth ira? Well, if I'm receiving a Roth ira, and this is what you might want to do with your siblings. You guys go to your siblings and say, hey, I'm going to take the Roth IRA for 100 grand. You go take that savings account for

100 grand or 120 or whatever. They'll be like, you're stupid. Yeah, I'm a dumbass.

Or that's the traditional IRA for 100 grand. You go take that. I'll take the Roth IRA for 100k. Now you get the Roth IRA for 100. What's going to happen? Well, I get 10 years now to use that account, invest it, no taxes, and it comes out totally tax free immediately.

You don't have to wait till you're 59 and a half. It's like a tax free ATM for 10 years.

It's freaking awesome. And so, and again, since it's Roth, there's no tax to be the same thing. If you did a Roth 401k, by the way, but the traditional accounts are gonna, there's gonna be taxes, they start taking distributions and then obviously the regular cash, that's not taxable, but like let's say a savings account that you inherited, but there's no tax free nature of growth and reinvesting it for over a 10 year window.

So the creative point here is you've got different retirement accounts and you can benefit different family members in different ways with the retirement accounts. And this leads me to my next creative point that I think is important is a business continuation plan. Be thinking about, okay, many of our listeners have small businesses and that includes rental property. So you may say, hmm, if I Died tomorrow. I don't want the family, the kids or whoever, even your spouse who may be a little distant from what you're trying to accomplish, going to just sell everything. You know, they don't realize you've got a five year plan. You know that a overpass is going in, you know that Amazon's building a campus or you know something and you haven't really shared that with family and you're like, these are five year holds. But you die and all sudden they just go, sell everything. And you're up in heaven going, no, don't sell that. You know, you're freaking out. So whether it's a business issue where you want to like pass on the business to part of your employees who you know will take care of it, keep your family as part owners, but you know your family's going to jack up your business, but your right hand gal or guy is going to run the business properly. Get creative. Think of your business continuation plan. Think of your real estate portfolio. How would you want it to play out? Stay up one night, write it up. We'll put it in the trust. It may not be perfect, but at least it gives guidelines to your trustee so that they kind of are informed and you can update it. I like to tell clients once every Christmas, write up an update of what's going on in your portfolio, your business life, because if next year you're not around, where's all this go? And it doesn't take more than a half an hour. Just write it up.

I love that. That's great. Oh my gosh, that's so important. We've seen, you know, we just had some problems with clients that didn't think that through and you see some family members fight over it and it's. Yeah, plan that out for any of you business owners. Okay, let's. I want to. About the family property. Sometimes this is like the, the cabin or the beach house or whatever it

may be, I'll take farm. You do that.

Okay. All right. So if you've kind of got like this family property that's used, it's got a lot of memories, it's vacations, it's family gatherings, family reunions. And you're like, I don't really just want that to be sold and go out. Once we pass on, I want my family to continue to use it. You know, my kids or grandkids, we want to have this stay in the family. And that's a common one. So you can say that in your trust. You say this is going to remain in the trust for the benefit of the kids or grandkids or other loved ones you might have. Maybe it's other siblings or what other people in your life, certain close friends that you want to have use of this property. So you want to want to think who's going to cover the maintenance of this. Right. Your trustee might have to hire a property manager. I don't know. But just know there's sometimes maintenance costs for this of course. And so just plan out for some funds being set aside for that to care and maintain the property. But that's. But don't think you have to sell everything.

Yeah.

You know some of the stuff can

carry on and this is where kind of like the non profit. It's a great, it's a good thing to kind of get that plan in place for that legacy property now with an llc, a family limited partnership teaching the family how to co manage it and co use it with a calendar and shared expenses. Then when the trust, when you die the trust just takes over. It can just continue to own that llc. And you've already worked out the kinks.

Yeah.

You're gonna find out this family member sucks. They get no weeks. This one gets whatever.

I mean it can even turn into a managed short term rental that the family gets to take their own weeks, you know.

Yeah.

It could even have some income producing of it so it's not a burden to the family. And those, those left on or if you don't want to leave a set aside of cash.

Yep. I love it. Now for those of you, I mean I'm gonna bring Yellowstone back into this. Some of you that enjoy that movie series. Kevin Costner said he's not coming back for season six. Okay. So we're a little sad about that.

So did they. Okay.

Yeah. But we don't know what's gonna happen. Yeah. You know we got sixes coming out, you know down in Texas and another series and 1820. 1873. Is it 1873. Yeah. Anyways. Embarrassed. Anyway, the good shows, 1923 with oh My gosh, Harrison Ford. So good. So Helen Mirren. Here's the point. It's a whole show but the key but reason why I'm bringing it up everybody is the key element in this entire show is the land. It's the land. The original Dutton that settled in the west in Montana trying to keep the land and fighting everybody off. And then Kevin Costner comes in as a great, great grandchild and da da da da da. Now we've got Casey and Jamie and Beth. But the theory, this is why this show resonates with a lot of people, is land is important. A farm is important. It's the family farm. And so we have an office up in Idaho. We have a lot of farming clients. And so this is where creativity really gets to be important, because I've seen good examples and bad, and I'm going to be direct here. The bad example that always breaks my heart is that dad or Grandpa, out of some paternal, you know, legacy history, that's the way dad did it. That's the way grandpa did it. They're going to leave the farm to the oldest son, and then what happens to all the other kids, you know, the daughters that ended up taking care of dad? I mean, this is so blatant. Daughters are taking care of dad, taking care of mom up to the minute they die. Sons out gallivanting around or whatever, working on the farm, knocking boots and doing whatever. And then he gets the farm. You know, and I joke about it, but it happens all the time. And some creative planning would have said, I'm going to have a little bit of life insurance or I'm going to carve out the home for the daughters, or I'm going to carve out this little investment for the, for the. The livestock goes to this kid or whatever. Keep the land and the, the line that you want. But get creative. It's okay.

There's got to be a country song about that. You know, pops dies and your. Your little rascal brothers out, you know, knocking boots. Oh, you're just like, you know, getting front of it, you know, anyways, with, with the dog and, you know.

Yeah.

Red solo cup, you know, but that's. This is. I love the yellow. So that's such a great example of, of this, of a legacy. I mean, that was the family's legacy. It kept the family together. It was income, it was power. It was all these things that they loved. And there was so much connection to the land. And so sometimes that's a business, too.

Yeah.

You know, and that's why I think that business succession planning is really important. But now let me say this. There might be that one child and you might have multiple kids, and there might be the one that is the one that's going to take on the business.

Yeah.

But you need to think about how to also provide for the others so that they get. They don't get, you know, nothing. Yeah.

And that's so funny. I mean, this is season four or whatever, you know, like Beth Casey would take the farm, Jamie train Wreck. Whole other story. But Beth, who's the. Really. She's the mini John Dutton. And she's just so strong as a character and smart, and she's the lawyer, and she sits down with her dad out. I'm sorry, this is not a big spoiler alert. Out on the. She comes out and sits next to him on his chair, and they're having a whiskey late at night, watching the sunset. And she's like, dad, I don't want the farm. Yeah, give the farm to the Casey. I don't care, but I'm going to protect it till then. I'll just take this, or I'll just do this. And she was like, can we just decide on this? And she couldn't get him to do it. And so she was just hitting her head against the wall, you know, And. And it's so. It's just. This is where many of you may say, I've got to have this intervention with Grandpa or grandma or mom and dad. It's a great time of year. Father's Day is around the corner. We've got a special on estate planning. Say, hey, dad, I'm gonna pay for your freaking estate plan. Can you just buck up and let's get on a zoom call with a real lawyer and design this. You want to change it later, it's fine. But I got to get something in writing because it's gonna be a train wreck.

Yeah, let's get something on the books. Let's get something in writing, something done, get most of the decisions out of the way. It does not need to be perfect. You can always come back and amend it. You're gonna think about it for the next six months, a year, and come up with another couple ideas. You want to change this, you want to change that? You easy. But just get going, get it done, get it signed so something's in place. Because we never know when our time is going to come. Right? And also, it's going to give you a little bit of peace of mind. It really will. Especially for those of you that are a little bit older, that are like, I know I'm way behind the ball on this. You know, I should have had this done. And, you know, it'll give you a little more peace of mind to know, all right, I planned this out. I've thought this through. And also, it's kind of fun. I want to say that it is kind of fun to think about these things and your loved ones and how you want to provide for them. It's kind of a little.

They Call it dead hand control. Your hand comes out of the grave and just jacks up your family with all these weird rules. Do it. Have fun with it. Say, every Christmas, to get your money, you've got to toast me around the Christmas tree and dance around in a song and stand on your head, whatever. But whatever rules you want in there. And it's a lot of fun. I once had a client. And last, we'll finish on this, too. I once had a client that said, when I die, I want this list of people. He literally provided the list. I want the trustee. I think he appointed me to the trustee, and I could still be on that list. And he said, take all these people, put them on a cruise. I want it to be the Royal Caribbean, whatever, Cayman Island, Jamaica cruise, and I want to be cremated. And then when I die out on the cruise, you're going to drop my ashes off the back. It was kind of grandma on the Titanic, just bloop. And dudes, drop them off the back. And I want you to read this statement. And he had it all written out. He's like, I had a great life. You were all impacted me. I love you. Da, da, da, da, da. And he said, put that all in my binder. Done. I want to forget about it. I was like, sweet. Love it. I go, do I get to go on the cruise? He's like, yeah, you go on the cruise. Read the statement. I'm like, okay, I'll take care of it, you know?

Yeah. And that. And that is a little piece of it, too, is just funeral and burial instructions. And you don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to have a plot at the funeral or the, you know, the cemetery you want to be at. You know, you don't have to have the funeral director and the people you want to speak at. You can be very basic and you can always add to this. So. But you could at least get some things down. I want to be buried here. I want to be buried by somebody or these family members and like, just get some guidelines out there. And that way when you do pass on, there's at least some indication of what needs to happen rather than everybody making it up and just thinking that was probably what they wanted.

Yeah. And this binder, last point. Gosh, there's so much. You're going to have a leather binder. Make sure you have a fireproof safe. You can get a fireproof safe for 50 to 100 bucks at Target or Walmart. Make sure that your titles, your deeds your certificates, your passports, and your trust is in this little fireproof safe. And you may even want to shoot, pull out a flash drive, shoot a little video and talk to each of your family members, put them on flash drives and put them in the safe with your trust. You can really have a neat experience with this and speak from the grave and control from the grave and help lead from the grave.

So make sure someone knows the password, the combination to the safe, though, okay? Yes, I ran to that one before, too.

There's your backup trustee. Make sure they know where it's at. So. Well, thanks, everybody. Great points. Matt, you brought us in. I'll take us out. Please get to kkoslawyers.com if you want to get your estate plan done during this special period. There's a little discount. It's all put out there. You can do this somewhere between 1500 to two grand. You get on the website, you'll see the pricing and all the options. And we're grateful to be a part of your lives. Please share this podcast with family members or friends that you know will impact them. We're grateful to be here with you. And we'll be here next week wrapping up this legacy month with a. I don't know what the twist will be. It'll be a surprise next week. Yeah.

Stay tuned. See you then.