ADVISING A RELATIVE ABOUT ESTATES

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The estate attorney probably will get paid by the hour so it pays to have your thinking done before the meter starts ticking off hundred dollar bills.

You each {Husband and Wife} need: a will, durable a power of attorney, a health care proxy, and advanced directive — or whatever the local equivalent in your jurisdiction. It’s typical — but not required to kriss kross as husband and wife.

(When it comes to pulling the plug on you sometimes it’s a duty best delegated to friend rather than a spouse.)

What you need to worry about is common disaster and incapacity. (I’m real good at worrying about stuff that can’t happen.)

You need a primary and an alternative guardian for the children.

You need a primary and an alternative executor for the estate.

They probably should be FOUR different people. (The children and the estate may have different fiduciary interests.

(The estate lawyer may ask for a custodian for all the children en masse, and a guardian for each individual child. Have some extra names in your pocket. See each child has a unique fiduciary interest.)

Common disaster means what happens if you both go down in the plane together. What happens!

Incapacity means that one of you can’t speak for yourself and the other can’t either or has died.

(Pushing camels through needles, imagining pink elephants, and envisioning zebras that have swapped black and white stripes is required in estate and insurance planning. Like at real estate closing they define for insurance purposes at exactly what TIME the transfer takes effect. That’s so when the building burns down there’s no squabbling whose building it was when it burned.)

Now for the hard stuff!!

You need to create a binder of all your assets. Even stuff that doesn’t look like an asset.

All deeds, policies, and account information. Anyone discharged form the military needs their dd214s and such docs.

Past five years of tax returns.

You should also create a family tree identifying all relatives / in laws, with name – addresses – phone numbers – email – birthdate (Date of Death if applicable) (Date of Marriage if applicable) (Date of Divorce if applicable).

Remember if he has to stop and ask a question, you’re paying for it. Since we know his staff will do all the work filling in forms, try to have everything done in advance and indexed.

The last thing to decide is who gets your estate (i.e., the children) and when they can get it.

P.S.: Don’t forget a large bequest for me!

p. p. s.: In Estate Planning, try never to leave large amounts of money to people who are the same age or older. It just gives the tax man a double bite. (i.e., I leave money to my Mom. The tax guy gets a bit when I die and when she dies.) You can leave a “lifetime interest in trust” for the older persons benefit if they need it with the remains to a younger person and avoid the double bite.

Hope this helps. Don’t hesitate to ask questions. I can tell you the mistakes I made and I seen made. :-)

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