Who gets your stuff when you die? | Main Street Business Podcast |

Foreign.

Welcome everyone to the Main Street Business podcast with Mark Kohler and Matt Sorenson. It's a good day today to talk about what happens to your stuff when you die.

Oh, I thought we were talking about what happens to you when you die. I was really, I was like, we've got that answer. Affirmative. We're ready to go. Okay.

No, just, no one cares about you. They just want your stuff.

Oh, no, I was thinking about me like, okay, I've got a pretty good, you know, feel where I go when I die, but not, we're not worried about that. It's where my stuff goes.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right.

That's really what people want to know. That's. No, I mean, I guess that is the age old question. What happens to you when you die? We don't have that answer, but we do know what's going to happen to your stuff.

Yeah, well, and we've got, we've got some theories on, on that. That's a topic for our religious podcast every Sunday afternoon. Joel Osteen. We answer your questions about God in the afterlife. But that's, that's true.

That's true. Tune in. That's invite only.

That's invite all that. Not the Main street podcast. We call that the Pearly Gate podcaster.

Yeah. So, well, well, I, I mean, I think this is interesting. Hopefully you guys do too. But there's so much that goes into this and it's interesting. I've just, we looked at our website traffic and, you know, this is a topic we do in terms of estate planning and helping clients answer these questions and make sure they got this dialed in. We are all going to die one day. But it's been seen significant growth on our website. I don't know if it's the pandemic and we've had more death and more loved ones pass. I don't know what it is, but it's got a lot of traffic on our website the last month. So we figured we got to get some good content out there and answer these questions that we know people have.

Yeah. And welcome to the show. Matt and I have actually been doing estate planning for clients for 20 plus years and we've got our seven now attorneys that we focus on that asset protection, tax, estate planning, that structuring. We're lovers, not fighters. We want to make sure there's not a fight when you pass away. And there's no grubby lawyers in there or the government or as in Jurassic park, blood sucking lawyers. So I get two points for bringing out the first movie quote today, and I love that. Nobody's like, no offense. None taken. If you haven't listened to our show before. We love this stuff. And with our law firm and our accounting firm and trust company, a lot of what we talk about is this topic, our asset. So this is right up our alley. We're excited to be here. Catch us on Stitcher, Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube. Whatever. Whatever format is easiest for you. If we're trying to get. Trying to be easy on the eyes. Matt and I both shaved today, so if you go watch, you know.

Yeah. Always shave on Wednesdays. That's when we record the podcast. So, yeah, Wednesdays are our shaving days. It's also also date night, so, you know, for me, so I shave.

Obviously, it's not hair day for me. I'm in a beanie today. But it's okay. This time of year, you can pull it off.

Yeah, it looks good on you. Yeah, it looks like you could be part of the Wet Bandits, maybe Home Alone. Wet Bandits. Yep.

I'd love stocky caps.

That's. That's one of the best names of all time. The Wet Bandits. It's funny.

Well, where do we start with this? Now are we gonna. Ooh, we need to do a couple little updates, maybe a little tax tip. Some deadlines here for people.

Okay.

Let's just make sure no one's left out in the cold. I've got. We're now on February. What is today? February 10th.

10th.

All right. Okay. No major deadline on February 15th. Michigan LLCs renewal are due. So if you have a Michigan LLC, you'll want to make sure you process that with the state. Now, there's about 15 states. You'll hear us point this out on a regular basis. About 15 states where you don't renew it on your anniversary date. So in Michigan, you may have thought, well, I set up my LLC in July, so every July, I have to pay my state. Nope. No matter what month you set it up, the following February 15th. Your renewal is doom.

Yeah. So this is like every guy that, you know misses his anniversary and gets in hot water for it. This is just another curveball. Okay, Just for your entity, it's

Michigan LLC is a little lower on the list. You know, miss my anniversary, Michigan ll. But yeah.

So still important, though. And let me say this. Our company maintenance program. Right now, we're closing out the company maintenance special. So if you want to get in that. It's 99 bucks to get on our company maintenance program. We do your renewal for you. So you don't have to mess up your anniversary. This is like, you know, we're, we're doing the work for you so you don't miss your anniversary and get in hot water with the state and have your energy dissolved. We also do your annual minutes for you as well. So that's the company maintenance program. If you go to kkoslawyers.com you can sign up for it. We have 6,000 plus clients on this service. It's a great service. I have to use it myself. I can't remember all my entities. I mean I work on a law firm every day and I know in Michigan, February 15th, but I just. It's easier to just have someone take care of it for you. You know.

Includes the minutes and everything that specials once a year. We've done it about five years in a row and it's normally 150. So that $50 savings, you might be able to go on a cruise with that. That's a good deal. Yeah. And I would just cruise 50 bucks.

Now no one wants to go because it's true.

There's no cruises. That's about what they're running right now. But you don't want to miss this Michigan anniversary date because you don't want to have the state come over and give you the cold shoulder. Cold shoulder during dinner. You want to know that. That they know you remembered them. Anniversary is.

And the gift you get them every year is the exact same. It's the same fee. It's just a flat amount. It's pretty simple. You can't mess it up. You can't mess it up.

You can't mess it up. How easy would that be? Same gift every year. No other major deadlines in February except the February 28th deadlines, which are usually quite large. Well, which is usually on the 28th. Is on Monday, March 1st. Because the 28th is on a Sunday for those of you didn't know. And we got a big list here. I'll just mention this quickly because it's just two and a half weeks out. This is the last of the deadlines to send in your 10 form. 1099. Ms. 1099 Div. 1099 int the 1099 R all with the COVID letter of 1096. You can mail those into the IRS without penalty by March 1st. Now don't forget everybody. There's the new this year. First year ever. 1099 NEC non employee compensation. They're trying to track down people that are getting paid under the table. If you want a write off for last year for paying someone in your business more than $600. You've got to make sure you get the W9. And then you send them a 1099 NEC by February 1st. Assuming you may say, Mark, hold it. You just said it's February 10th. That's right. You're now 10 days late. I would highly recommend you send it in even late then. Not at all. The penalties are not fun. And if you need to deal with that, you can go to the accounting firm side of our equation here. Ke-cpas.com and talk to Jackson. Just throw that out. Ke as in Kohler and air. Ke-cpas.comand talk to Jackson. And then March 1st is also the renewal day for all of those that got married. And I married an LLC in Iowa. Delaware. Oh. Oh, no. So it's Iowa LLCs and then Delaware, Nebraska, and Rhode island corporations. There you go. There's our deadline. Okay.

Well, that was exciting. I hope that was very exciting, but that's some great information. I. I'm suspecting where Mark gathered all that information is from the Mark J. Kohler calendar. Is that where that all that information was contained?

Wait, we are being so sly today, aren't we? Yes. That is a shameless plug for the. Thank you, Matt. The March A. Kohler calendar, which could even be sold out as of today. I'm deciding if I'm going to do another print run. Some people say, who prints a calendar in February of the year? Everybody buys their calendar back in November or December. Well, not my calendar because it has all those important deadlines throughout the year that have now been updated by the IRS and all 50 states. So if you want to check that out, get over to markjkohler.com cool. Okay.

All right, well, let's. Let's hit the topic, and I want to just kind of lay it out for everyone so you know where we're going, what topics we're gonna hit, and then we're just gonna hit them.

All right,

all right. So we're talking about what happens to your stuff when you die. And, you know, we're trying to keep this light and fun. Just keep that in mind. We know this is a serious topic. You may have lost a loved one recently and are literally in the midst of dealing with this. You know, you may have a loved one that's about to pass. And so we know this is a difficult topic. We try to keep it light and interesting because we want people to plan now. We want you to consume this information and actually plan. For it. So here's what we're going to talk about. Your life insurance, your retirement accounts, how do those things pass? What about, what does a will do? What about my kids? If I had minor children? I mean, that's probably the most important stuff you got. What about your assets and probate? How are those going to pass? Do you want to put conditions on them? And so we're going to hit those topics, maybe run through them, actually, in that order, of how those things pass on to your loved ones and how to plan for it so that you don't have drama and, and fighting and people questioning what you really wanted, who gets what. Just lay it out. Make a plan.

Love it. May I start with a story?

I think all good podcasts do.

Yes, they do. Little bedtime story now, by the way, I want to echo what Matt said about being sensitive on. On the topic. Please don't take our, you know, jokes or jovility as is jovility work. Being jovial. Jovial, whatever it is. Now it is was said here first. I had a phone call yesterday with a client where her father passed away over the weekend. And we talked about some of this. So this is a, this is something we talk about every day. And so please be patient with us while we try to make this palatable, because it's not a fun topic otherwise. So here's a story. And this was just from the last five months, and this is where I'd like to start with that list. Okay, I had a client call and where were they at? I can't remember the state at the moment. And they got. The daughter was on the phone with the son, mom had passed away, dad had passed away a few years earlier. And they were pretty emotional and they wanted to do a zoom call. And I was like, okay. So we got on this zoom call. They were back east somewhere. I know the, the daughter was from here on the west coast. But they got me on the call and they said to Mark, our friend told us to give you call just for a half hour, that you probably point us in the right direction. We're doing this because they told us to do it. I could tell they really didn't want to be on the call. And. And they said, we're meeting with a lawyer tomorrow. And. But someone said to call you first. And I said, okay, cool, let's. Let's talk. I said, what are you doing at the lawyers tomorrow? And they go, we don't know. We're just getting started. And I said, hold it. Okay, how much are you paying them. And it was like 500 bucks or something. And I said, you're just going to go meet with them? And I go. And they go, yeah, that's what you're supposed to do, right? And I go, maybe, maybe not. Let me tell you this. And so here's where I would start with this list that Matt put out. The first thing to do. I know obviously there's the grieving and the funeral, but when it comes to this asset stuff, create an inventory. Just get a spreadsheet. And if you've got multiple siblings or children or family members involved, create a Google sheet. Create a Google sheet that everybody has access to. The more transparent you can be if you're the trustee, if you're the executor, and we'll talk about some of these terms. Just. Just be friendly. So many of the family gets territorial on this topic. Don't get territorial. Open a spreadsheet. Let's say everything needs to be open book. And if there's one family member that thinks they're in charge and they don't want to share information, there needs to be an intervention. Everybody needs to kind of jump on them and say, hey, none of this has to be, you know, top secret. Get a spreadsheet going and make a list.

Make.

Make a list of all the life insurance policies. What is their. Matt's and I were going to start talking about these assets specifically, but life insurance, retirement accounts, homes, property, land, cash in the bank, bank accounts, cars, trucks, anything. I don't care what. Guns, pianos, rings. Just create a master spreadsheet that has all these assets. Because as we start to talk about these today and as you start to deal with them as a family, it'll be so much easier to know what you're dealing with if you have this master spreadsheet. So I shared this with this brother and sister, and they were like, oh, my gosh, well, we've got a lot to do. And they go, we probably don't need to meet with that attorney tomorrow. And I said, correct. By the way, do you have a trust? Yes. Get a copy of it. Let's look at what it says. And is everything funded? I don't know if you need to meet with that attorney yet. They teared up. They were so grateful that they had avoided probably a expensive and unnecessary meeting. So that's where I say start on this whole asset list. It's just make a list.

All right, so you've got your list now, and here's the usual items that

you think that was A good idea.

Oh, I mean, yeah, you got to start with the list. I mean, a spreadsheet. Talk to me. Spreadsheets.

Yeah. I had you a spreadsheet. I put a pin table in there.

Yeah.

Yeah, I thought you'd echo that, that that was going to be helpful.

I was. Did you want me to put more energy into that? I didn't.

Maybe I didn't. I feel like I just discovered plutonium there. And, you know, you're like, okay, let's move on.

All right. Okay, well, let's start tack. Ticking away, tacking away, checking. What's the phrase?

Moving through.

Moving through. Let's start moving through these. Let's talk about insurance siding. Right? All right, now, here's an important thing to know. There are some assets that are going to pass by what's called a beneficiary designation. Okay? This is not going to pass in your will or trust, if you have one. Even if you have a will or trust, the beneficiary designation is what's going to control. So you've got to make sure that these things called beneficiary designations on certain things, like life insurance, retirement accounts, bank accounts, investment or brokerage accounts, that these are exactly what you want to happen. So this is a form you'll have when you got a life insurance policy. At the beginning, you said, who's the beneficiary that gets this? The proceeds of the policy when I die, Same thing on a retirement account. So focus on your beneficiary designations, and if you don't know who's on them right now, go check. You know what I mean? Like, this is something to check. And you, your insurance company, your retirement account company, you know, here at Directed Ira, when I hit retirement accounts, I mean, we're update. People update these all the time. And it's a very important thing to be updating.

And now if you name the trust as a beneficiary, then the trust is involved. And Matt and I, if you have minor children or children that act financially like minors, and that doesn't mean they're bad people, but some people struggle with finances.

They're not ready to handle a million dollars from a life insurance policy. Let's be honest.

Do it. You know, let's be honest. So we oftentimes recommend that the beneficiary is the trust, and then it's going to hold the money and divvy it out in proper ways over time, which we'll come to in a moment. But. But the first thing is, is just knowing who the Beneficiary is I. I tell a story that's more verbose and it's great. But hit the highlights. It's true story. In California, about 10 years ago, this guy dies on the golf course. His wife mourns, they have the funeral. She calls the insurance company, can I get my insurance? And they go, what's your name? And they're like, your name's not the beneficiary. True story. It happens a lot. And they go, that's you're not on this life insurance policy. And she's like, who is? And it was his first wife from 30 years ago. He had never updated his beneficiary. She thought, that's no big deal. I'll call her up, she'll obviously sign this transfer agreement and I'll get my million dollars. Nope, did not go as expected. And it ended up in California Supreme Court. And these are cases that have gone all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The beneficiary designation controls, period. I like what Matt said. The will or trust does not matter. And no one knew did husband really intend that or not. First wife got the money. So everybody should be updating these regularly. And when you get a trust, it's easy to change it and change this all the time.

Yeah, cool. Can. I think insurance is pretty straightforward. Like we said, you do want to plan for the, you know, the money coming. If you got minors in particular, that would be the beneficiaries. And we'll use the trust and get to that. Let's say retirement accounts. Those are also going to pass under a beneficiary designation. But there's a couple notes to know about a retirement account. The first is you generally want to list your spouse, if you have one, as the beneficiary on your retirement account. Because what happens is when your spouse passes away as the surviving spouse, you can get what's called a spousal rollover. So if they have an IRA or 401, it basically just rolls over to your IRA or 401k and becomes an account in your name. It's pretty simple. It doesn't have to become an inherited IRA or a beneficiary ira. It's simply going to pass as a spousal rollover into the surviving spouse's name. And now that's unique for spouses.

Okay. And a lot. There's a lot of debate out there. Should I list my kids or the nieces and nephews or children as the secondary beneficiary? Or if you're not married, should I just put my kids down there. It is true that when children inherit an IRA or certain types of retirement accounts, they could have some choices on their distribution strategy for tax purposes. But I've always believed that before taxes we've got to talk about should the child who may be 5 years old or 35 years old, should they be receiving this money unfettered, uncontrolled, just in one big lump sum. We've had many experiences in our firm where the beneficiary could be a drug addiction and giving them even $10,000 could kill them. A lot of times when a big, big chunk of money comes in, they'll overspend an od. And so I argue that even with retirement accounts we have a provision called a see through provision in our trust where there's still some tax elections a trustee can make so they can minimize the damage. But I'm more, I think it's more important to consider the child or the beneficiary than the IRS in those situations. Matt, do you agree? I don't know. I know it's a very, It's a hot topic.

Yeah. As a default, my kind of rule of thumb is list the spouse first as your beneficiary and then list your trust second if you have one. Now what happens if you list the trust or let's say you just listed your kids as beneficiaries or child is they're going to get what's called an inherited IRA or sometimes called a beneficiary ira. Now the rules on this changed recently under the SECURE Act. So now what happens is they're going to get that account for 10 years. They can keep that as a retirement account for 10 years, whether it's Roth or traditional, but they're going to have to draw that account out at least at the end of 10 years and take a distribution. Now it's cool that they can inherit it as an inherited IRA or beneficiary for 10 years and still get tax deferral or tax free income in it. But eventually that will get need to get distributed out over a 10 year window. Now. But I like adding in the trust because you never know, there could be creditors that your children have that you don't know about. One of your kids might have a judgment against them, a credit card deal thing gone bad, that a creditor is just going to, they're going to get their inheritance, this retirement account and it's going to go poof because inherited retirement accounts are not actually protected from creditors. So there's a lot of reasons why it makes sense to use the trust as the secondary if you have one. And as long as, like Mark said, it has the see through trust provision in it, which, which are standard trusts and estate plans do, of course, yeah.

Now let's go back to the list. Okay, everybody take a breath. You might be like, oh my gosh, this is miserable listening. But if we go back to our spreadsheet, what you want to have in this spreadsheet is each column of each asset, which we've already now talked about, just life insurance. There could be multiple policies or retirement accounts. So what you want to do is under the asset name, the company they're with, then you're going to have a column for the account number or the policy number, a contact phone number, a contact website, email. I want you to have a little notes column of here's our plan. You may even say, here's who the beneficiaries are. So this is what you're going to be populating as you, as you find all this information out so that then you can go, okay, well, how do I get this money? Well, you simply contact the insurance company and they're going to have a form for you to fill out. A lot of times you're going to have to send them a death certificate, sometimes a certified death certificate or an original, and you can request those through your state or county or city or a lot of times you can ask the funeral home for help. There's a, there's a lot of different methods on how to get your certified death certificate. But when you get certain death certificates, get several of them because you're going to have to hand them out to several of these companies. So you may think, well, I have one marriage certificate, I should have one death certificate. Oh, no, no, no. You can get, you can get multiple death certificates because people are going to want them. So to prove that what happened really happened. So get a chunk of those and have them in the file. But, but this is what you're populating is this spreadsheet.

Yeah, yeah. Now your bank accounts are the same thing. Like if you have just bank checking accounts or even like a brokerage trading account or something that's in your personal name, not a retirement account. You know, these are going to pass by a beneficiary designation as well. So if you hold large amounts of cash in particular or a large brokerage or trading account, that is something you may want to list your trust as the beneficiary on. Especially if you have minor children, as we mentioned here. Just so you have those protections that they don't get a large lump sum when they're not ready for it or they have creditors or an alcohol or drug addiction. Those provisions in the trust can kind of stop in and only give them what money they need for their support, not give them a large windfall of cash. That could be disastrous.

Yeah. And now bank accounts can be a little tricky because it's true. You call up Merrill lynch or some large broker dealer and go, my spouse died or grandpa died or mom died, they're going to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, who are you? And they're going to look right there on the system to see if there's a beneficiary designation. And if there is, they're going to go fill out this form, attach a death certificate of bank. But bank accounts can be a little more tricky. The a lot of banks, they're like, are you the executor? Show us a copy of the will, show us the death certificate if there's not a lot of money in the bank account. Over the years, I've seen so many banks be very cooperative and move the money where the executor wants or the trustee with no questions asked. But the more money in the account, the less cooperative a bank can be because they're scared they're going to get sued, some kids going to walk in the door and go, what the hell? You know? And I mean, if there's a couple grand in there, it's not worth fighting over, but if there's 200 grand in a bank account, I don't think they're going to move that around for everybody as easily. So, interesting enough, Matt, I was at Wells Fargo, oh, three months ago. I was opening up a new bank account, and it was the first time Wells Fargo had ever done this. The person opening the account, they were a little older, not typically the 18 year old that just got hired yesterday. And she goes, hey, by the way, do you have a trust? And I go, as a matter of fact, I do. We're going to talk why everybody should have a revocable living trust. We only charge 1500 bucks any state in the country, married or single, and that's our base to get 90% of our clients finished at that price point. So as we talk about this, don't be stressing about that. She goes, do you have a trust? I go, yeah, I have a trust. And she goes, fill out this form and I'll make your trust the beneficiary of this bank account. And I was like, oh, My gosh, thank you. And I go, why are you so on the game, you know, on the ball here? And she goes, well, we had a training in the office last month, and I'm starting to bring this up with all my new accounts. And I was like, thank heavens. You know, that's a. That's a good thing. So I'm not saying Wells Fargo is better than any of these other banks, but you can ask your bank for this little form, and they're everywhere, and I was grateful that this little person had reminded me when I was there. So that's great. Bank accounts, again, can be tricky. I don't know, Matt. Do you, like, have a different strategy or. You concur, Counselor, with that?

Yeah, I mean, it's one of those items when you're setting up the account, you probably listed who the beneficiary is when you die. And now these, Remember, these are individual personal bank accounts. Business bank accounts do not have a beneficiary. So keep that in mind when you have your business bank account. Businesses don't die. The owner of that account is still XYZ Corporation or ABC llc.

Okay.

And so you want the company ownership to transfer according to your trust properly. And that way, whoever takes over the company would obviously have access to the bank account, could become a signer. But for your personal accounts, it's probably something you did at the front end when you set it up. You may not remember again. Go back and look and see who the beneficiaries are on those things. And in fact, I did it recently myself, too, with a couple different banks, and many of them had forms, luckily, that would update multiple accounts at once. That would just update the beneficiary designation on multiple accounts at once. So. So, yes. Okay. Bank accounts. All right. I think we hit all the beneficiary designation items, right? Yeah.

Let me ask you a question or two. Let's stick with this for two seconds. I think 401s and IRAs, they're pretty standard on the type of beneficiary. We've got articles on this. You can Google it quite quickly and find out what are my options as a beneficiary of an IRA or 401k, based on my familial relationship to the person that died.

Yeah.

But let's say you have a pension, and pensions can be kind of different every. You know, I've seen so many different flavors of pensions out there. I typically tell clients, just call the administrator, call the company and go, what does this pension allow for? Is there a Survival benefit for. For a child under age 18 or a spouse, or does it just end when the person dies? Matt, what are your thoughts on pensions or more unique retirement accounts?

Yeah, you're right. Pension's gonna be a little more tricky. Those are considered defined benefit plans. So the company makes an agreement, or the plan itself makes an agreement to pay out a benefit under certain circumstances. It's not just automatic cash like an IRA or 401k, which is like, well, you're alive, it's this much, you're dead, it's this much. It's just a matter of who's getting it. A pension is a little different because they may adjust to say, well, if you pass away, then we'll still pay a benefit, but maybe it's reduced and it's to your spouse. If you have a surviving spouse. If you don't have a surviving spouse, maybe we'll play paid this much, which is a different amount to, like you said, if you had minor children or adult children that were dependent upon you. And so those. Those can be a little different animal, of course. So, yeah, great, great tip there. That could take a little extra care and may pass in a different way.

Yeah. And now when my dad passed away, and God rest his soul, he's such a great hero of mine, it's been about 10 years now.

We.

Luckily I was in this industry of doing estate planning, so I was a little more savvy, I guess. But we started this spreadsheet, a list of all the assets. It's not uncommon. And this happened to us where stuff just comes out of the woodwork. It's like, it could be an annuity, it could be a bond, it could be a CD that all of a sudden you didn't know. Mom or dad went and bought a year ago. It could be. And these annuities are weird, too. They could have a death benefit or some cash, and there could be life insurance policies that are term versus whole life, and there's decisions that need to be made. And I swear it was almost nine months to a year after my dad passed away and my mom found another drawer. And then there was a couple annuities. The dad, about 20 years ago, and I was like, oh, my gosh. And I put them on the spreadsheet and then found time to call him. So that. That way there was an accounting so everybody could see what was going on. And I called on these annuities and, geez, I think there was 75 grand in one of them that we were able to put in A bank account for mom. And so don't be frustrated by this. I think if you do have the time and your family's working together on this, go through the house with a fine tooth comb. Just go through it and look through every drawer. Go through the bank accounts even a lot of times, go through mom and dad's checkbook and see what they've been paying for. They've been paying premiums. Does anything look odd? And start calling phone numbers. Just call people, be nice. Don't take your frustration or the passing of your spouse on someone. But. Yeah, yeah, but there's a lot of weird ones that could come up. Any unique ones that come up to you, Matt?

You know, one, one that I've had that's not in the beneficiary designation, but it's kind of like some personal property items. Those are the ones I've always popped up of. Like, I had one of a client that just had a bunch of gold, you know, like little like. Like gold coins and stuff like that. That was a pretty significant collection, like six figures of value there that, that the family didn't even know about that, that, you know, grandpa here, you know, dad was just accumulating this stuff because he kind of just liked having, you know, a little old school, liked having gold. And a lot of older people do. And so. But that was something they didn't realize or plan for. And what was the family going to do? Were we just going to sell it? Were we going to divvy up the gold and things like that? But there's some of these personal property items like that that will be part of the estate plan. We'll talk about just here in a moment of like, let's just get a quick outline of your personal property items for yourself. Or if you're helping your parents complete the estate plan, this could be the gold or mark mentioned earlier, the guns, the musical instruments or the jewelry. Some of these things that have some value, whether they're sentimental or actual, you know, you could sell it for, you know, some, some good cash that you do want to have, identify what the heck it is so that your loved ones know. They may not know that you've been stashing away gold or that you got a little lockbox of cash or whatever, identify those things. So. So people, your loved ones know about that stuff when you pass.

Yeah. And I. This almost goes without saying, but I have seen it all and I'm still kind of consider myself somewhat young in this industry at 20 years. But if you find something, tell Everybody else share. It's always going to come out. It always does. And I've seen families go in to clean the house from mom or dad and. And someone finds, like Beth said, some cash in a drawer or in an envelope, and sometimes they find it in a book. Two years later they find, you know, $1,000. You know, because mom and dad are kind of hoarders and they. And a lot of older people, some of you listening here, like, yeah, I could go around my house and I've stashed this here or that there. But when you die, people kind of bump into this. And I've seen daughters and sons take that money and just pocket it and just walk away. And, you know, you got to go through the pearly gate someday for that. So just again, share it with the family. Say, here's what I found. Let's split it up. I think you want to keep the fights to a minimum. Money's not worth it now. But, Matt, before we go into some more unique assets, Social Security. Social Security. Social Security is a weird one. If you have minor children, there's gonna be a minor child benefit. And so you wanna immediately start looking at what the rules are for that and apply if you're a surviving spouse. I could go through a variety of examples here. We probably should just do a separate show on Social Security. How do you build it, how do you get it and all that. But the point is husband and wife, whether the spouse is getting a spousal benefit or they both had earned benefits or whatever. If one of the spouses dies, the benefit changes and it's going to go up, but you don't get to just keep what your spouse was getting. It's not like you both get two benefits. There's going to be some math involved based on the type and the money and all this stuff. So. But you've got to get in touch with the ssa, Social Security Administration, find out what the rule is in your situation and reach out to them, fill out the forms. But Social Security is what get on right away. Yeah.

I'll even give one example. On Social Security, I helped a client whose spouse, whose prior spouse they had been divorced, had passed away. And the divorced, surviving prior spouse did get a Social Security death benefit, which I don't think a lot of people know that one. That's a surprising one. That's kind of like the life insurance, but that is one where Social Security did pay out this surviving spouse that they'd been married for a long time but were divorced at the time. Of his death. So there's. There's a lot of interesting.

She earned it.

I mean, that's. I mean, that's just the law. This is how it worked out. So. And I was pretty surprised by it when we kind of ran. Stumbled into that. But. So, yeah, Social Security is its own little animal. We will do a show separately on that. There's a lot to obviously plan for there. Okay.

You choose, you hit gold. We're kind of in this podge of assets.

Yeah, let's. Let's at least do a brief discussion and we're talking about assets. Let's just talk about your kids. That's. That's an important, obviously topic here is if you do have minor children that

pass away, if they're an asset, unless they're a teenager, then they're a liability. Is that how you.

Yes, yes. They're your favorite liability, but they're. They're a liability, but they later turn into an asset, you know, so.

They do. They do.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, they produce little grandchildren who are the real.

Yeah, maybe.

There you go.

There you go. So. So, okay, your kids. All right. If you have minor children, 18, you know, under 18, you want to designate a benef. Sorry, beneficiary, a guardian for them when you pass away, who's going to take care of your kids if you pass away, Your spouse passes away. And so this is going to be included in your will. Even if you do a trust, you're still going to have a will. And the primary purpose of the will is to designate a guardian for your children. That way, if you pass away, you know, your siblings, your parents, maybe if you have a spouse, their parents, or an ex, their parents aren't family fighting over who's going to be the guardian of your children. It'd be nice to have that right designated and put into your will so that it's clear who will be the guardian when you pass. Now, the court will still. It's not ironclad what you say in there, but the courts give that the greatest weight is who did the parents decide would be guardian of the children upon their passing?

Who'd you choose when your kids were underage?

Brother. So I have one. One of my brothers.

Yeah.

And, you know, I. I think that's an important thing to think about is who to choose, because there's geographic considerations where you live and family. There's also age. Are your parents older? A lot of people list their parents. And it's like if your parents are 70, they don't want to raise a 10 year old or whatever, you know what I mean? They maybe want to be grandma or grandpa still, but that might be a little imposition on them and just their stage of life. But for some people, I realize that might be your best option given the categories, but I like to look at siblings first. If you have them that have good stable homes to think of.

Yeah. And I always recommend choosing one guardian and then a backup. Don't choose a couple. I think the movies or whatever it is says, who are your godparents for the kids? Well, I don't want to make couples guardians because what happens if they get divorced? Now there's a custody battle over my kids with my brother and sister and their divorce. That's just weird. But that's what happens. So if you're going to choose a sister or a best friend or a brother, choose that person. That's where the kids go. And then if they can't do it or unwilling, who knows what's going to be going on in their life. Yeah, it's going to catch everybody off guard, you presume so they can turn it down. So you've got to make sure you have a second and a third backup. But those are an asset. The kids, you want that. I. Yeah, I'm sorry, I had to think through that. No, I. We've got to say this real quick, too. We've done other shows on what is a revocable living trust and what is an estate plan.

Right.

That's not the purpose of this show we've got. You can go into our history and check that out. And we may. We'll do one of those. We have a special every June or July where we kind of do a little discount on estate plans and we'll dive a little more deep into actual documents then. But suffice it to say, and I like what Matt said, there's a will and for all of our clients, we want them to have this revocable living trust that really is named as the owner of your assets, or the assets are listed in your trust or by default the trust just grabs them and. And that trust is going to have it be 30 to 40 pages long and it's going to have all these little rules in there of how you distribute stuff. So it's. It's revocable, you can change it, it's yours and provides a lot of privacy. I don't know, Matt, what else would you say?

So the one thing to think about with this trust is it owns your stuff, so it owns your llc, it owns Your corporation, it owns your home you live in. Right. It could be the beneficiary on some of these things we talked about earlier, life insurance, for example. And it's going to have provisions in there. So one benefit that it owns your stuff is when you pass away. The person you listed as trustee upon your passing has control. They can move the assets around, they can sell stuff, pay out cash to beneficiaries according to the rules you set in the trust. But no one's going to court. See, if you don't have a trust and you own real estate in particular, even your home, you're going to court, okay? Your, your heirs are going to have to go to court. Probate, that you got a business, oh, you got a rental property in another state, you're going to probate, you're going to court in that state too. You know, and so it can be pretty taxing for typically the small business owner, rental property investor. Just anyone that has a home that you're going to have to go to probate court when you're, when you pass. I mean, your loved ones are. And so the trust, just that one simple thing alone makes it worth it. I mean, just you're going to, what you're going to pay in probate fees, your family is versus what you're going to pay for a trust. I mean, it's going to be five to 10 times what you're going to pay. So, so that's one thing, avoiding probate.

Yeah. And the, the, some people go, well, I have a will, doesn't matter. You can have it notarized, gold plated, stamped, sealed, delivered, couple witnesses.

You know, a judge is still going to have to say that's valid. And yes, you can transfer that property. Yes, you can sell that. Yes, you can give this air, this like you're still going to go get approvals.

Yeah. So let's summarize at this juncture. Let's, let's step back again. You've got your list. You're listing down all the assets of mom and dad. And I'd start putting them in categories. Not only do we have these columns of information to help resolve the distribution of that asset, there's going to be a section for insurance, a section for annuities, a section for retirement accounts and pensions, and maybe a spot on Social Security. And you may even say, here's the family member that's going to help figure that one out. So you can divide and conquer. Now we get into this mod podge of all these other types of assets that if you don't have a trust, we could be here for two hours, kind of talking about each little asset. And so maybe we can choose some big ones here. But I like what Matt said about your home. That's a big one. If I just talked to this client yesterday, and I said, get a copy of the trust, go to the county, and pull the title. And a lot of times, you can get the parcel number off a bill that mom and dad paid. Before you go to the county with the mom and dad's name or whatever, do a little research. And I said, find out if the trust is on title. If the trust is on title. Done. Now we just turn to the trustee. We can sell the home, we can rent it, we can do whatever the freak we want. And it's not too hard. You can even get a title company involved. So do your research. That's the purpose, again, of this spreadsheet. If you find out that it's not in the trust or mom and dad never had a trust, that's when you want to probably go to Google and find a probate attorney in that county. Got to choose a local attorney that can go to the courthouse where the property is located and say, will you do a. And sometimes the probate can be fast, it can be simple, it can be expensive. It just depends on the county you're in.

Yeah, it does depend. And like in Arizona, for example, we've done some of them. It's not a major thing of what we do, but, you know, if it's a small estate in particular, you can do it without appearing in court. There's some. There's some workarounds. There's. We've had, you know, California clients that own stuff in Arizona and vice versa. And so there are some workarounds, but. But you never know. And if you got a bigger estate and stuff, and you got seven multiple states, you got company ownership, you got to move around. Oh, my gosh. It becomes. It becomes quite a chore and an endeavor. And like. Like I said earlier, way more in legal fees. But if you're in that situation, you got to deal with it. And that's. You know, I think some people that are having to face this now because they didn't plan, you're just gonna have to slog through it. It's. You know, it's not the end of the world, but you're gonna have to jump through these additional hoops to get to the end game.

Yeah. And. And I think if some of you're like, why is this Such a pain. You have to realize that anybody that's a custodian, for lack of a better word, or the caretaker of these assets, which could be county, an insurance company, whatever it is, a bank, if this turns into a fight, they get sucked into the lawsuit real quick. So everybody is very careful. And you would say no one's helpful. Well, they're afraid of getting sued. So this is why there's these hurdles you've got to jump through. And Matt, at the very end of the show, let's talk about, just for two minutes, about what to do to keep the family squabble to a minimum and what to do if it breaks out. Let's maybe come back there. Okay. I'm gonna throw an asset at you. Do you want to throw one at me? We can just kind of see if we can. Okay. See what each other thinks.

Okay.

Okay.

All right, you go first off.

Okay. I'll throw you a softball. Just because I love you, you throw me one hearted. Later. We talked about the personal home checking who's on title. Maybe go and do a quick probate because you can't sell it until you go through this court action. Unless you have a trust. Rental property. You alluded to that. How do you like to structure rental property and what happens if you didn't structure it? Right. So I'll leave that to you.

Okay.

Yeah.

The rental is one where you're going to do. The trust owns your llc. The LLC owns the rental. Now, let's think about when you pass away. What do we need to update who owns the property? No, the LLC still owns the property. You need to update who owns the trust, really? I guess the LLC still. The trust could still own it. Let's say your surviving spouse. Well, the trust generally is going to say the surviving spouse is now just 100% beneficiary of the trustee. So in many ways, in that first instance, you're not going to do much if you're a surviving spouse. Let's say, though, that it wasn't surviving spouse. Let's say it's the children are the beneficiaries. Now, the trust is going to typically say the ownership of the LLC is going to be divided amongst the children, and the trustee can do that, or the trustee could decide to just sell the property that the LLC owns and basically get the cash proceeds in the LLC bank account and then distribute that out to the kids. So you're really not going to be focusing on the property itself because the LLC is still going to stay there and own it. You're going to be focusing on who owns the LLC now based upon the terms you had in the trust.

Okay. Let's say, and I know you've been in Matt's actually had some fun court stories we can't share today due to time. But what happens if there is no trust and there's four or five kids and mom and dad are dead?

Okay. Now we'd look. Was there a will first? Okay, if there was a will, we would go by what the beneficiaries on the will are. But, you know, let's say this rental property was in Indiana. You know, you're going to go do a probate in Indiana, and Indiana judge is going to approve the transfer of this Indiana property, even if this is a will that you did in California or you did in Arizona or Idaho

or wherever you're at.

So now let's say you didn't have a will. Now this is the scary one. If you don't have a will, the law has this presumption of who your heirs are. If you have a spouse, it's your spouse. If you don't have a spouse, it's your kids in equal amounts, regardless of, you know, what you would have wanted. If you don't have kids, I believe it's your parents. If your parents aren't living, then it goes to your siblings. There's this whole. And every state has a little different variation, but there's kind of this default rule on who's going to get your stuff if you have nothing in place. But then those family members, whoever they may be, surviving, spouse, kids, parents, whatever, are going to be the ones having to chase it down. And that's going to be a much lengthier probate process. By the way, if there's at least not a will. Because then there just have to be notices that go out to, to notify all interested parties and family members who may have a claim to the estate. And sometimes it becomes so expensive for smaller assets or properties that aren't worth enough. People just don't do it. They just, it's just not worth the legal fees to go chase it down and, and get that asset.

Yeah. And. And you know, we hope there's not a family squabble in the mix because if, and I'm going to just throw out this twist, I'll bring up this because I think it relates to it as the family farm. You know, dad, it goes to the oldest son, but he never wrote it down. But that's what everybody thought. And I as chauvinistic as that sounds, it's quite common. And I've grown up in the farm country through most of my life. And we have an office in rural areas. Cause we love Main Street America. So I have these meetings and there's a lot of daughters and second and third sons or whatever that are like, what the freak? The main assets, the farm. And dad said it went to the son, but there's no will, there's no trust. That's when the fight begins. And so, and another quick side note is 50% of Americans don't even have a will. That's what, that's what stats show. 50% of Americans don't even have a will. And many of you go, well, I don't have anything. You have more than you realize. You've got maybe a retirement account. You've got Social Security, you've got life insurance. You might have a little home. All of a small business, kids, like

if you got minor kids like who again, go back to this guardian thing. I mean, that's a, that's a huge, that's such a huge consideration and decision.

It's huge. And so now here, Matt's example of Indiana. Here's the crux of it. The judge is just going to decide what to do. Do we sell the rental or do we put five owners in it? Sometimes making five owners is just delaying the inevitable of another lawsuit. So the judge see a train wreck coming and go, we're just going to sell this damn thing. So, but that's what the judge's job is to do is in this probate, everybody's going to say, here's what we think should happen. Here's what we think should happen. And Judge Judy, for lack of a better example, is going to say, here's what I think's best. Send me hate mail. But this is it. And that's. So that's the purpose of probate. And even. And especially if it's a family farm worth millions. Oof. Very contentious.

So, yeah, yeah, I mean, I had even one crazy case. I'll just tell a basic story here of kind of a handwritten will slash suicide note before someone committed suicide and there was a girlfriend listed to get assets in there instead of a surviving. There was no surviving spouse, but there was a child, the only one. And it became a big mess. And this and you know, these obviously two different pieces of that person's life fought. And you think of that person who committed suicide or, you know, even if it wasn't suicide but just passed and that drama that, that, that Ensued following that. That's not what they wanted. They did. They didn't want to cause this big mess of, you know, their loved ones that they had in their life that they left, you know, forward to, you know, they left behind essentially to go fight over this. And I think that's what good estate planning really comes down to is it's not about you. You're going to be gone. But you know what? You've done a lot of work in accumulating assets and things. You've worked hard in your life. Take some time to make a plan so it's clean and easy so that your assets don't ruin your family and the loved ones you leave on so that it becomes a benefit and a blessing. You could be charitable too, but I think it's. It's one of those things I think a lot of people overlook, but when they pass, they don't realize the drama, the contention, the heartache, the ruined relationships that can ensue if they don't have this clearly laid out and have a plan.

Yeah. And some of you may hate your family and you're like, that's why I left a mess. Because 30 rotten. Whatever, you know, give it to charity.

You know, geez.

Yeah, let's do. Now I'm going to choose an asset, unless you want to throw. You want to throw me one or you. I, I can be choosy or you have one.

Let's, let's. I mean, you mentioned the family farm, but let's talk about your operational business. Let's talk about your. Your. You're. You, you worked and ran this business. And let's even say it was one you had a partner in with.

Oh, boy. Okay.

Throw your curve.

I didn't expect you were gonna bring that one up.

You gave me a softball. I'm gonna give you a. A slider.

That's good. That's good. Okay.

This isn't the appetizer slider.

Okay, so let's say no plan. If you have a business and no plan, it can be devastating because who's allowed to operate the bank account, run the merchant account, collect accounts receivable, do billing? I've seen this with clients that are a physician and they're trying to do Medicare billing and insurance claims, and the doctor's gone and the spouse who didn't expect this is trying to run a business. They have no clue of what to do. And it doesn't matter if it's. I've got a female lawyer client where her husband is a stay at home dad. And he's not involved in the business. And so it's not a chauvinistic thing. Again, it cuts both ways. So if there's not a plan, it can be very, very difficult. So you've got to immediately lean on the employees right away, open a probate immediately and try to get what's called letters testamentary, which means a judge. And I probably move for a temporary order where the judge say, judge, no one's fighting over this. Just let me run it and just. I'll be a custodian for this asset, but let me run it. And with these letters now, testamentary, you can go to the bank, you can go operate the business. So you want to get. You don't want to let this. You don't want to dilly dally if there was no plan, because you know every day that business doors are shut or confusion, you might lose employees, the employees might steal the business or whatever. It could just be carnage. So that's. Now if you have the opportunity to do some planning and you don't have a business partner just like Matt, and sided with the rental property, let your trust own it. You have a trustee. What we like to draft in our trust now is a paragraph or two called a business continuation plan. It doesn't have to be elaborate. Can just say, if I die, here's the board of directors, that I want to run the business. I want it to be sold in this way. I want the spouse or the children to have ownership in this manner. And they know how the business can or cannot survive. You know, this people. So, so write it in a paragraph, we insert it into the trust, and you're good to go. But before I ramble too much, Matt, what about a part? I mean, what do you do? With a partner?

Yeah, with the partner. The one thing that's a key there is a buy sell agreement.

Okay.

And you may have a life insurance policy involved in this, Mark. And I have one of these. And what it basically says is if one of the partners passes away, what happens is the surviving partner takes over the 100% of the ownership or takes over that person's ownership, but has to buy it from the deceased partner's estate. Okay? And there's a fixed price, you know, you'll come to a fair market valuation of what that is. Now, for some businesses, that and people, they can just buy it out immediately, right? You could even say you will buy it out. The surviving partner will buy it out over a period of five years. And we have that as a. A common Provision in our operating agreements for our partnerships that there could be. There's a buyout. Surviving partner usually would be able to take over from deceased partner. And, and that's because, you know, like, let's say, I mean, I pass away, my kids can't own a law firm. Like Mark's not going to be partners in other businesses with, with my children, for example, or you know, or Mark's spouse or whoever. Just think of your partnership situation if you have one. Like the person that you're a partner with is unique to that business. And so it's generally the sense that we want to buy, sell agreement so that the surviving partner can take ownership, run the business moving forward. But the deceased partner's family gets bought out. Now one way to fund this is through a life insurance policy. So you can have what's called a key man life insurance policy. So what would happen in my passing? The company or Mark would be the beneficiary on that to policy with the purpose of using that money to buy out my estate. My heirs who would otherwise have claim to the, to the ownership in the company. So does that make sense? I don't know. It's kind of going in and out of our personal situation.

Yeah, yeah. No, no, it's good. And so Matt and I are both worth more dead than alive. And that's typical for a business situation. We've made the policy now that we cannot fly on the same plane. That's a good policy to have, Matt. That probably brings up a good story of our flight. Right? I mean.

Yeah, yeah. So this is, this is one of these moments where it's like, you know, in our partnership, it was a kind of a wake up call. So Mark and I had to get to Phoenix for a meeting like the next day. And we couldn't get a flight. We were both in Cedar City at the time, which is a smaller town in southern Utah. Kind of has a small little airport that'll take you to a few cities and you got to connect from there anyways. So the most economical thing was just to rent a little private plane, get a local pilot there. He had a four seater plane and he's gonna fly us into Phoenix. Now Mark had a plane at one point and had taken some pilot license lessons. I don't know what you'd call it. Had set some hours under his belt. I think it's been a while.

It has. I realized real quick that they call these planes doctor and lawyer killers for a reason. But anyway, I was living on the edge.

Yeah. So so the pilot's like. I mean, he's this kind of younger pilot, you know, and we got the headsets on. You know, this is a propeller plane, whatever. And I'm in the back. Mark's. There's like, a fourth seater. Okay. Mark's up there with the pilot. And they've got the yolks. I think that's what it's called. I would call it a joystick. A yoke.

That's the. Okay, what do I know?

They've got the yolks, and I'm in the back, and. And Mark and I, first of all, are cracking jokes.

Yeah. We're making omelets up front. So we got this.

Okay. All right. Okay. And Mark and I are making Top Gun jokes, you know, about, you know, we're too close to. To missiles, switch to guns. And, you know, like, we're doing.

Yeah, yeah.

Across the flyby, you know,

and the.

I'm sure the pilot was just like, who are these morons? But. But. So then I remember coming into the. To, like, land, and Mark's like, let me kind of come in to approach or land, you know, and the. The pilot's like, okay, all right, let's see what you can do. I think he let you go for maybe 30 seconds. It was like, no. He's like, you gotta get down, man. You gotta start descending.

Well, I think the pilot looked in his. Looked in his rear view mirror. They have rearview mirrors and planes. I don't think so. He looked back, and there's Matt. He was like, hold it. You're really gonna let Mark try to land this thing? And I think that's eyeballs as big as saucers. And, like, this guy's gonna have my

stress level with, like. So that was seriously, like, we both had this little realization that, like, there's a lot of jobs and people, but this thing both went down and, you know, so you might want to think through those things in your business. And we should probably do a podcast just on partnerships and business succession planning and buy sell agreements. But that's where you want to start looking if you have business with a partner or multiple partners, is you generally want the surviving partner to kind of take over and run the business, but let the deceased partner's family get bought out. And you can use a life insurance policy as the funding mechanism to pay that out. If your business has a significant value that you want to just immediately get them paid out.

All right. Okay. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Getting all excited. Okay, let's. Okay, we got to move Quick. We're. Yep, we're. We've been rambling, but I'm going to hit two quick assets. Pets. Pets is a very common asset. A lot of people think what do I happens to these pets? And with a third of Americans, one third of Americans own a cat or dog. That's a lot of animals. And when little Fluffy dies and grandma's gone, typically no one wants these pets. But these pets were very, very special to the deceased. They could be horses and as well and farm animals and things like that. So without a plan, these assets again have to be divided up amongst the beneficiaries and who's going to take care of them or whatever. They're years ago. And I joke about this in a fun way. Many of you cannot imagine it being a fun way. But I talk about what happens to Fluffy if grandma dies. And it's not pretty. So you've got to have a plan. We'll leave it at that. Okay, next are guns. Guns are another big one. And guns are a hot topic right now in America. There's station that's already been proposed. Joe Biden's administration really wants to clamp down on assault rifles and other types of guns and handguns and the way to get guns and. And that's all fine. You know, it's a very hot topic. A lot of motions there. But if you do own firearms and you don't have an estate plan, it's not just put them on the table and let's divide them up. You've got to go get those registered within a certain time period, especially the handguns in certain states. All the states, almost all of them have different rules and it can be a federal offense. If you don't register it to a person within the right amount, it almost becomes an illegal firearm or a. And you don't want that. So you've got a firearms cannot be a shotgun, fine deer rifle, whatever. But you start throwing in handguns and assault rifles and suppressors and all this stuff. You got to make sure you've got a jump on those quickly and get them transferred.

I was going to say one. One last item. I would just know. And this is we're hitting some of these personal property items is that I've seen just some dispute on is is kind of like the jewelry, the musical instruments that art, the photo albums. There's certain things that stuff you have that really has no value to anyone else. But there's certain people in your family that may want them. And so those personal property items are something you can identify when you do your trust. And it'll be in this. We have kind of like this personal property item where you can just list out, you know, so and so gets this, this ring, so and so gets this necklace, so and so gets this musical interest, so and so gets the photo albums, so and so gets this, these furniture items. And sometimes people don't go to that length, but those are some sentimental things that you might have loved ones that. That may want that. And so it's also something we do when we do a trust that you can just add to that as you go. It's in your state plan, it's in your binder. It's something you kind of add to it. It's kind of a fill in the blank form that you just kind of add things as you think of things of who you want to get what. And these are assets that don't have title or things that are more official you got to update. They're just kind of more like your wish list that hopefully your family and the trustee respects.

All right, my final comment will be this and one more example. I've seen it multiple times where grandpa or grandma are the last one to die. And the most local sibling who's typically done a lot to help mom or dad or grandpa or grandma. And I get that. And they may have not been compensated for years. And they have a brother or sister that lives five states away that doesn't appreciate what they do. I know those feelings go really, really deep and they cut deep. And so what some siblings do is that local sibling, when mom or grandma or grandpa dies before the family can get into town, they go pilfer the house, they take the china, they take this, they take the gun, they take the piano, the wedding ring. And then the family shows up in town and they say, where'd this stuff go? And then the typical response is, well, mom or dad said I could have it because I took care of them, you didn't. Can we even count how many times that's probably going on right now, today, somewhere in America, if not a hundred times today. So I just want to encourage all of you, whether you are the. Remember the. Where the other person's coming from. If you're that sibling flying in from 500 miles away, be patient. Realize that you haven't maybe wiped someone's bum or done cleaning and on your hands and knees and been up in the middle of the night for days on end and you don't know what this other sibling's been through. Be patient and Understanding it may not be worth fighting over some of those things and say, you know what, they deserved it. Also, if you're the child that's been there at the house doing a lot of the hard work or not, if you have access to the house, it's always better to in these situations to lock the doors, corral the assets and say, let's have a meeting and figure this out. And then voice your concerns. Say, you know what, everybody, I deserve a little bit more here for what I did or I didn't do. But just going in arbitrarily and just grabbing everything and pilfering the house. I've seriously seen siblings come up with a U Haul truck and clear out the house days before the funeral, literally. And family shows up and goes, I mean it is ugly. So try not to be that person. Be careful.

Yeah. And if you're thinking of your own estate, think of that dynamic. And you know, this is something your trust, this revocable living trust in your state plan is something you can amend, you can change it. If you're in your later years and you're still, you know, a good sound mind, of course, to make these decisions, update things, let your family know. This was my wish that, that this child who helped take care of me get. Got a little extra. They got some of these extra personal assets. They got an extra 50 grand. They got something extra as a thank you in recognition for putting some of their life on hold for taking care of you at your later stage in life. And so that's probably the best solution is have that update in your estate plan. If this is you or even if you're the person taking care of that family member, let them know this could be a contentious issue that could come up. As it is, I've seen it too. It is one of the most common conflicts amongst children when parents pass away is the one that took care of them in their later years. Visit them at the nursing home all the time, you know, did like Mark said, change the diapers and stuff. And the family members who were far away, there's so that. But if mom and dad said what they wanted from it, everyone deals with it, lives with it. And that's, that's the easiest solution.

Mom, dad, just don't put your kids on title to the house. That doesn't help. That's only going to create more nightmare too.

Yeah. And that's one thing. Let's. Let me make a comment on that. That is one of the most dumbest things to do is to just put your one of your kids on title the property. So they're like, well then we have to go to probate court. Mom, just sign the house over to me. Okay? What did you just do? You just create a tax nightmare. There's a gift tax issue there. There's could be step up in basis that you're going to lose that you're not going to get when they die. So you're going to create a capital gains tax issue. There's so many dumb reasons why you should not do that. But that's again what something you do when you plan your estate with the good estate planning lawyer, whether you're using our firm or not. That should be part of the discussion on like how do we actually do this.

So yeah. Well, everybody, thank you for being patient with this. We went over our time a little bit today, but hopefully over a couple jogs or a couple commutes you were able to get through this podcast.

Thank you.

Thank you for your patience with us. Trying to keep it light and fun and interesting. Our hearts go out to any of you that are right now dealing with the passing of a loved one. We did not mean to offend, but hopefully we covered some topics you may not even thought of. So God bless you. Hang in there. Thanks for listening and we'll, I think open forum next week. So we're going to be answering questions next week and send them in. Get over to mainstreetbusiness.com and we won't be able to get to all the questions, but we'll choose the ones that are good. Maybe not yours. So sorry.

See you next week, guys.