Family-Centered Estate Planning, with Sati McLafferty

0:02 I get asked a lot about estate planning. People say, "Do you know an estate planning attorney?" The answer is yes. I know a lot of them. I know bad ones and good ones. I work with bad ones all the time, unfortunately, in my probate real estate business. And good ones I refer people to. One of the keys is always the level of individuality and customization and focus on their needs. And I was really excited when I met Sati McLafferty. She her focus is on family centered estate planning. And I found that an interesting topic and we chatted about it. I want to share with you. So Sati, thank you for joining us today.

0:32 Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Tell me about family centered estate planning rather than what the paper mill type. What's a family center plan look like?

0:42 That would be the comparison, I suppose. So a lot of estate planning attorneys, it's like pumping people out left and right, you know, they're just trying to have lots of plans coming in and out of the door every week. I don't do that. I max my client list out at like six people maybe a month because I really want to spend the time with my clients to get to know them so that I can create plans that work for their family when they actually need the plans to work. So, we want to make sure that it's a living document that they're coming and they're talking to me and they feel comfortable calling me or emailing me or texting me to say, "Hey, this changed in my life. What do I need to do?" instead of, you know, thinking they might be getting a bill in the mail every time they reach out to me because I don't think that that is conducive or helpful to our clients.

1:32 You know, there's a famous phrase in sports, everybody has a plan, and this is from Mike Tyson, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And I think that in estate planning, not everybody has a plan. And the bad news is that many times people have a plan, they pull it out and realize it's not really the right plan for their circumstances. So, let's talk about, you know, the advantages of getting something customized. What are examples of things that you've seen that people needed special planning to accommodate or maybe they've come to you and had a plan that didn't accommodate things that were really important to them?

2:06 Yeah. So, I mean, one big one nowadays is blended families, right? So, if you have kids from a prior relationship, there is the potential for partially or fully disinheriting your probably partially disinheriting your kids if you don't do the right planning. I've seen this from people who do online planning. someone in my own family did this and I asked me to review it and I was like, "Thanks." But I will I did review it and I was like, "Oh my gosh, you are not I don't think you're accomplishing the goal that you think you're accomplishing." So, that's a huge one is blended families. You absolutely need to have someone who knows what questions to ask you so that you get a plan that works for you. Another big one I would say is when someone has a beneficiary with special needs. So, if they have a minor child or an adult family member who has is on government assistance or is otherwise disabled we need to make accommodations in the planning to keep them eligible for those government assistance. So, we want to make sure that the trust does not when the parents die or whoever it is that created the trust dies, we don't want them to inadvertently be kicked off government assistance for some period of time because that can especially if you're looking at like residential care facilities or something, that's really expensive and that can get that can add up really quickly.

3:35 So there's special needs and then there's also times where special needs can't take care of themselves. So some special needs are a matter of physical disabilities and inability to provide for themsel. And so in those cases you're talking about structuring the distribution so that they don't get disqualified for government help they're entitled to.

3:54 There's a whole another level of people who are special needs that need people to make decisions for them. I guess that's a that's a guardianship or conservatorship. Is that also part of the family centered estate planning process to look at that and say we're going to need to do this and kind of get everybody lined up and ready to go on that?

4:12 Yes, definitely. I mean, the big thing I think is important for people we want to maintain individuals who have disabilities, we want to maintain their individuality. We want to give them as much power to control their life as possible. So, we don't want to take away their rights. You know, we don't want to go full conservatorship if we don't need to. so when we create a trust, that's helpful because we can provide for them. We can supplement their government assistance, but we're not kind of removing their ability to be themselves, right? I have a I have a child with special needs. He's five right now. and I, you know, I want everything for him, right? Like I want him to be able to do anything that he wants to do, but I also want to support him in the areas of his life where he won't be able to accomplish what he wants to accomplish. So, that's kind of what our goal is with doing the trust and whether it's someone who is, you know, physically handicapped and they aren't able to physically work or whether it's they have an intellectual disability or something along those lines or maybe they've had a traumatic brain injury or something like that, then we, you know, we can accomplish all the goals along that spectrum. When you say family centered, you know, there are times that everybody gets along and everybody's on the same page and pulling every or pulling the same direction and there are times when not, hence the need for attorneys oftentimes,

5:39 Right? And so when you're writing the estate plan, I would imagine that there, you know, because I see the aftermath where maybe there's one sibling who's making claims, asserting control that maybe the documents don't really provide for, the other siblings don't support, and the parent is kind of stuck in their presence or intimidating their presence. So talk a little bit about how do you help manage? Obviously, you're not a psychologist. You're not a family therapist. you're the attorney, hopefully. Yeah. But you're also the attorney for the for one party. You're not attorney for the whole family. So, talk a bit about the family dynamics and how what role you do play in that, what role you don't play in that.

6:17 Yeah, definitely. So, funny enough, I come from two therapists. My dad's a psychologist, my mom's a marriage and family therapist. but I am definitely

6:27 For both of them. Yes. I had a nice upbringing. no, I'm kidding. I did have a nice upbringing. sorry, I got I got off track with that. Yeah. So, there's So, with the family centered approach, it really is like I am not a therapist, but I do want them to share with me as much as possible. So, I want to know where there's underlying conflict. I want to know if the siblings have like this history of being really competitive or someone always feeling like they're loved less by the parents or that kind of stuff. I do want to know about because that's the kind of stuff that once the parents are deceased that will bubble up. There is no longer the parent generation to kind of tamper temp tamper that down to keep it down, you know, and there's there's no one keeping them in check anymore. And then it's just these two kids who have grown up or adults usually but these two people who grew up together who have a long history and who have deep-seated feelings of you know less thanness or something along those lines you know and so it's really easy for tempers emotions to get really high once that parent generation has passed away. So I do want I do want that kind of information and that's part of the reason why I do the kind of the family centered. I am not meeting with the whole family. That would be against the confidentiality rules but I do want the parents to be open with me. If they want their kids to come in I will meet with them but I you know we don't do the deciding stuff. I will give them gen general information that kind of thing. or if after once the plan is put in place, I always encourage my clients to share it with their whoever is going to be affected, the kids, the siblings, the parents, whoever it is. and because I want those open lines of communication because when the when somebody does die, we don't want people then being surprised, right? Because that's when we end up in court because they're like, "Wait, what? I was I was

8:29 Expecting to get this that or the other and here I am kind of like you know feeling like I got way less than I anticipated or whatever it is.

8:38 Oftentimes you know the fights that come up are those about sentimental things within the house. So I also really encourage family members to talk about that ahead of time especially when you have like aging parents where we can really plan ahead for it. Like for instance, my grandma, she lived to 96 or 97. And before she died, she had she had my dad and his sisters go around and put little dots that were different colors on all of like the furniture or the nice things that they may have wanted. So like we're not fighting over that kind of stuff when the person dies. We want to make sure that, you know, we can be all cohesive and remain that family unit. I really want to prevent family conflict because the point oftent times of families doing their estate planning really is to create or to continue on the family cohesion, the family unit. They want their children, their family members to remain cordial and enjoy each other's companies. And we don't want to have things deteriorate because of money or because of grandma's clock or whatever it is. So yeah, we want to talk about that kind of stuff ahead of time.

9:47 And yet those fractures are going to come out. I mean a 20 a 200page estate planning binder doesn't solve 50 years of dysfunctional family experience.

9:57 No, it doesn't. yeah, I my go my mother's father my mother's mother passed when she was young and he remarried and she hated her stepmomster she called her

10:08 And there was a conflict over her mother leaving her these I forget what they call them. like a they're like crystal ornaments. And I remember hearing about lusters. They were called lusters.

10:22 And I remember hear about the lusters like they were like the family jewels or they were like, you know, some, you know, like the crown jewels of England, the way she talked about how beautiful they were and how important they were. And she had siblings and the siblings would fight. And then when my grandpa when his new wife left him, he went to move to LA. My wife my mother said to him, "Yes, but you need to bring the lusters and then we'll decide what to do with them." I remember thinking, I can't wait to see these lusters. They sound like they're going to be, you know, some and they were just like some dumpy little crystal things. You know, my mother's very modest, but to her is very important sentimentally. And there was no estate plan that was going to resolve that issue. So, she had 50 years of resentment to her father that right

11:00 That was unworked out that wasn't going to get resolved. I think that's the people have to be realistic that the plan won't solve your family issues. that will maybe manage them

11:09 As effectively as you can during a difficult time, right? And that's yeah, all we can do is do our best, right? And I think the having the I think in those situations oftentimes communication may not be open across generations. So I do, like I said, I do encourage my clients to have that conversation and bring the family members in so that they know what to expect. and with and one of the things I don't I also include I don't think anybody ever fills these out, but for that kind of situation, like there's a form that you can fill out that says, I have this luster, I want it to go to my daughter. I have this luster, I want it to go to my other child. You know, that kind of thing where you can fill it out, sign it, you date it. You don't need a notary. You don't need an attorney. You could do that now. You don't need someone to give you the form. It's just a list, right?

11:57 But again, like if we're setting up a trust, there's no court oversight. So it still requires some matter of cord cordiality. Is that a word? You know, like they have to still kind of follow the instructions.

12:12 So towards that, now you write estate plans. Do you also help families administer the plan when it when the decedent passes and it's time to put the plan in effect? Is that part of your practice as well? Are you just on the estate planning side?

12:25 I also do administration. It's a much smaller area of my practice right now. I'm I'm fairly new in my starting out in California. but I you know I think as your practice matures you inevitably have more estate administration. You start going from heavier estate planning to heavier administration. So

12:45 I expect that to happen but right now it's a much lighter portion of my practice. One of the things that I think customers that I find as a real estate agent, and of course I'm just involved in a piece of it, but often it's the more valuable piece or big chunk of the estate

13:03 Is the expectations of what the attorney does versus doesn't do. And that's true in probate and in trust administration.

13:12 And I guess there are some attorneys who take a more comprehensive approach, but they're going to bill for all that. Obviously, that's expensive. Yep.

13:20 And there's others who take a much more defined and limited role to the legal role. And I find that the customers there feel overwhelmed with, well, I thought the attorney is going to do all this stuff for me. Obviously, that's handled with setting expectations up front and the reminding along the way. So, talk a little bit how do you try to set expectations of the role that you play or that you ideally play and then I'm sure there's exceptions, but how do you set that up with customers from the beginning? Yeah. So I provide everyone with well our engagement agreement and then a letter to either the trustee or the executor and that outlines everyone's roles. So outlines what they need to do outlines what I do outlines what's you know if there's court role in it then the court role. and that like you said we have to just set expectations at the beginning. I am probably somewhere in the middle in terms of how much handholding I do. in terms of administration processes, on the planning side, I do a lot of handholding. because like I said, I really want these plans to be effective when needed. on the administration side though, I give a lot of direction and probably less implementation on my part because like you said, it's far more expensive for me to do it. Unless, of course, the executor is like, I don't have time, but I have money. Then, sure, you know, they're they're doing a costbenefit analysis for themselves. They don't have the time to do it themselves. I want to hire somebody out. Either it's me, a paralegal, or you know, some other sort of professional like you,

14:54 Fiduciary maybe. Yeah. A fiduciary. And so it gets down to where sometimes there's a conflict or everybody's kind of on the same page administering it. But the administration in my way thinking is is really just a business. I mean, in a sense, you know, you have an estate, it has assets, you know, maybe $5 million, $10 million. And if your job is to dispose of them from the estates perspective and transfer them to the beneficiaries, it's no different than if a company hired you to close down their company. There's interim CEOs that that's that's a business and right

15:29 And you know it's a lot of money and it's a lot of transactions, negotiations, documentation, paperwork that so often people get appointed to be the successor trustee don't understand

15:39 That they're really just running a business temporarily or going out of business sale for a company. and oftentimes the person they trust the most isn't equipped to really handle that. Whether they're not businessoriented or they're so busy because they're business oriented, they're not the right person. So talk a bit about how you advise somebody on who they should identify as the successor trustee and whether that person they trust is really the most effective or the person who's most effective they maybe don't trust. Yeah, I those are the right things to think about and that is how I counsel my clients is we talk about it's not just the role of the trustee or the executor but you have the power of attorney the agent under the power of attorney the healthcare directive all of those have very different qualities in the person. So when we're like you said like close closing an estate, it is like running a business. It's a business fire sale sometimes, right? Because we want to do this quickly. The kids just want to get paid. Let's get out of here. So kind of oftentimes it turns into a fire sale. But it is a matter of being able to be organized, have some sort of financial knowledge or know that you don't have the knowledge and that you need to hire someone. And that's what I that's oftentimes what I tell my clients is like your trusted person oftentimes a child or a sibling doesn't have to be doesn't have to know everything. They don't know how they don't have to know how to administer an estate, right?

17:06 That's my job to teach them, but they do have to understand that they don't know that and they don't know how to invest funds. Maybe they don't know how to sell a boat. Maybe they don't know how to sell a house. These are the things that where we want to make sure that they are aware that they don't have that knowledge and then capable and willing to find somebody who does. So they don't have to actually be that person, but they're more like managing the process and manage overseeing the whole thing and managing the right people. And so that's kind of that that's how I advise my clients because often times they don't trust other people that may be a better fit, you know, but if someone is being hired, then we have a duty, right, to perform our duties. and then like in comparison with like the health care, the medical directive, we want someone who is not going to be super emotional in a high stress situation or somebody who has some medical knowledge maybe or, you know, just totally different qualities. So, all of that is is stuff that I talk to with my clients to make sure that they understand the roles thoroughly and then also understand kind of the right people to fit into those positions. And you know, I talk about this material regularly and yet I realize that my wife and I only have one child and she's a really smart girl. She's 29, married, but she's got two kids. She's pregnant with a third. And if she'd be disappointed if we died, she'd be more pissed at me if I put her in that position or didn't give her somebody she could rely on to help with the administrative piece of it. I mean, she's a smart girl, but she between dropping off kids at school and feeding kids and all that, she's not going to want the job of disposing of assets.

18:48 I can just imagine her cursing at me after, you know, in the afterlife. So, I don't know if you can hear that or not, but I don't want that job, but and that that's why I know for me, I try to regularly recommend to customers, there's a couple different like thirdparty fiduciaries or administrator companies that will kind there's different ranges obviously, but I think that that those are underutilized. I think more of my customers would be better served using those and maybe that's something to talk about putting in the plan because I feel like I'd hate to call my daughter with hey you have to take care of all this

19:17 But I would feel less bad to say you have to care this and by the way here's somebody who I recommend who can help you with it and he only charges x amount of money or whatever and handles that. So

19:26 Yeah. Yeah. And that and one thing I do is I like to build a lot of flexibility into my plans for that reason because maybe today like if you had named your shot your daughter when she was 21 or had just graduated college, no kids, not married yet. Sure, she would have had the time to probably manage it and the capability and all of that, but you know, you don't know when you're going to pass away. We have no idea when that's going to happen. And so we don't know what kind of position those p those people are going to be in. For instance, like I my aunt named me the executor of her estate. She told me it was a trust and that I was going to be the trustee. Turns out she actually did a will. I should have looked at it ahead of time. That was on me. But when she did that, I was practicing in Colorado. She lived in Texas. So that was pretty close. I wasn't married. I didn't have any kids. Would have been super easy for me to take care of business. When she actually passed away, she had terminal cancer. So we knew it was going to be at some point in time, but she ended up living, they said six months. She had six years. So by the time she actually passed away, I had a child, a young child with special needs, a baby, and I live in California. And so, you know, I still took on that role, but it was incredibly difficult. So, what I do with my clients is one encourage or at least give them the resources about professional fiduciaries or banks. if they have enough assets then banks may take the job on or I build in flexibility or I should say and I build in flexibility for that trustee to be able to name a successor trustee. So

21:00 If she had done better planning my aunt and I was in that position I could have named my successor then I may have named a professional who was in Texas who could do this right

21:09 Instead of me flying back and forth with a six-month-old that was still breastfeeding. Right. not ideal. So yeah, so building in flexibility and just, you know, and also updating it. I talk to my clients at least every three years. I want to make sure that their life hasn't changed dramat drastically. If it has, we want to keep updating those documents throughout life. So, if you know that somebody has a special needs child now and they're not going to have the capacity to actually do what they need to do to get the job done, then let's find somebody else who can, right? And let's make sure that the person that you originally named knows so that they're not offended or you know that they know the reason behind it, right? Because a lot of times people are offended even though they don't want the job. They get offended by not being named or by being removed as the person named.

21:59 I literally got a phone call referral this morning was coming works last couple days where the decedent had bought a property in a trust. at the time he made the trust he was divorced. So he wrote the trust based on having some kids from his prior wife not including the prior wife but it was a trust. It was a distribution list. He later got remarried and lived this the trust was 1999 I think I think what 20some years married to this next woman and had told her he was going to get around to updating the trust. Of course passed without updating the trust.

22:35 So she literally gets nothing. She's living in the house. Of course, the kids want to pry her out with a crowbar to get every dollar of value because they can't stand her because she's the whatever the stepmother.

22:48 And so, let's talk about the importance of getting updated because I know for me personally, I remember I did an episode of this show one time. I was talking about the need to update and how you change accounts. I go, "Hold it. I just changed all my brokerage accounts. I didn't put them." you know, brokerage accounts are different. You have beneficiaries, but still it I just hadn't thought about it and I realized, you know, here I'm talking about it and like I should run through my mind, are we up to date on this? And like you mentioned, my daughter, for example, I need to come up some other plan because I don't want her to take this on with three young kids running around the house. She'd be pissed at me for the rest of my eternal life.

23:22 So, talk about the importance of updating it. What's your best advice on how often people should obviously major life changes, but absent that three years, five years, they should reach out to you. You should reach out to them. What's that look like?

23:33 Yeah. So, major life changes, birth, death, marriage, divorce, large inheritance, or asset changes, those are kind of the big ones. they should reach out to their attorney for sure. And I often recommend as long as their attorney was good and as long as they had a good relationship and felt comfortable with them, go to your existing attorney because they're the best person, generally speaking, the best person to update their own documents. A lot of attorneys nowadays, myself included, really hesitate or don't update other people's documents because kind of like the last attorney to touch it is the one with all the liability. So, if we don't catch something in someone's original documents, you know, we don't want their liability. That's kind of an aside. But, otherwise, I reach out, and I feel like this is pretty common nowadays, is that most attorneys, most estate planning attorneys should be reaching out to you every three years at a minimum. 5 years is probably when you're actually looking at changes oftent times, but 3 years is good to just like keep it top of mind. Take a look at it. Remember who is in what position. What did you decide about those distributions because honestly we do this plan in like six weeks, four weeks, something like that oftentimes or depending on the client I had six months, eight months, two years. But we do this plan and then we sign it and forget about it, right? They forget that they're supposed to put stuff into their trust. They forget what they put in like what they said in their trust. Who's getting what and what percentages, who's the agent under the healthcare power of attorney, you know, all of this stuff.

25:10 So, let's just look at it at a minimum. I do like a 15minute call or Zoom or if they want to come in, we can do that. But we look at the overview of their documents and make sure that everything still looks good to them. If it looks good, great. We don't have to do anything. No charge, free. Walk away. We'll see you in three years. But if something needs to be updated, then we just do an amendment or a restatement at that time and make sure that it's going to work if they, you know, pass away. Now,

25:37 One of the areas I work in regularly is the they bought the great estate plan. They wrote the check. They did the meetings. They fill out the forms. They got the great binder. They went home and put the binder away in a safe place. and the classic I nowadays it's more online but back when we out to people's houses more often I would say to the customer hey notice your title's held you know Bob and Mary Smith oh no we have a we have a trust we have an estate plan and they go back and they pull out the binder and there in the binder was the instruction sheet and right below that was the grant deed they were supposed to file with the county and then maybe the instruction sheets the bank accounts that they never transferred over the legal term is funding the estate. but it seems to me that is the one of the two biggest breakdowns that customers experience is

26:28 Imagine that customers not following instructions. and I'm probably guilty that myself. So, I get that most of us are

26:37 Most of us are. So, let's talk about how do obviously there's a there's a line. You can't make customers do things. On the other hand, I mean, if you could if you could buy a stick you could hit customers with to make them do what's good for them. We don't all buy that stick. there is no such stick. So what where do you have where do you address that line of pushing them because you know it's good for them and then of course at some point you have to back off.

27:00 So what I do is I at a minimum I'm preparing the deed to their house and recording it. So their house will always be in the trust when they walk out of my office on signing day or you know shortly thereafter.

27:13 Hold on one second. That's that's big. Well hold on one second. That I'm in real estate now. That's a that's the big one right there. So, let's talk about that for a second because

27:22 As you know, it doesn't happen. you know, it's interesting. I'm on the LA County Bar Association list serve, which like a chat line

27:30 As an affiliate member and you see these things going back all these discussions. I do it to learn and they'll say, "Oh, all you need to do is a Heggstad petition." As if, "Oh, yeah, you just file a Heggstad petition. Oh, yeah. you just, you know, fill out the box, check. Yeah. This LA County court files that hearing date six months from your filing. So, it's it's easier than a probate and it's faster, I guess, than a probate, but you can't get heard for six months.

27:57 And it costs about as much as a probate does. The Heggstad petition in LA in California is a remedy. If it was supposed to have gone in the trust and didn't, perhaps you can make your case.

28:07 But so often people get these plans. I literally have an estate. I think I met you through my friend Kevin Bemel. We're in an estate for a $40 million estate where he wrote a large check and that estate plan never got signed or executed and we've been in probate court and it's been a lot of work a lot of work a lot of litigation a lot of complaints. So this is a big issue. So I want people who are listening to understand and not all attorneys do this as far as the real estate. So talk a little bit about I'm in your office. We finished the plan up. we have real estate one or more piece of property. What is it you do that is going to help them avoid that problem?

28:44 Okay. Yeah. So, one is the we I actually record the deeds. So, the deed that you sign in my office says I transfer my property from me to me as the trustee of my trust. So, that is the proper way to hold legal title when you have a trust. so it would be like Jane Smith to Jane Smith as trustee of Jane Smith trust or something like that.

29:08 You record with the county for the customer and I record it. Yes, I record it in the county where the property is located. and including with whatever supplemental documents are you needed. So we have like the PCOR, the change in ownership form, the documentary transfer tax exemption form and that kind of stuff. So, those are

29:30 Hold on. That's big, too. No, hold. I know you know this, but for people watching this is big because you have to fill out the form that says this transaction is exempt from changes in property tax assessment or you risk the county saying, "Oh, you sold the property from you to your trust. Great. We'll reassess your taxes and we'll get an extra couple thousand dollars a year from you for the rest of time." So, you actually fill out the form and that's the proper way to do it. oftenimes customers follow the deed on their own and assume the county is going to figure it out or it gets rejected. And so that's another piece of this that you're doing for them. That's fantastic. Okay. I'm sorry. I just want to make sure people follow this.

30:07 Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So, I mean, so if you have owned your house for 20, 30 years, of course, that if they if your house get your property taxes get reassessed, that can be a huge problem for you. or surprise.

30:21 So yeah, maybe $20,000 a year isn't a big deal to you. So maybe you're being present, but for most people, $20,000 rise in property tax is a big deal.

30:31 It's a really big deal. Yes, definitely. So that is that I feel like is my obligation is to let my clients know that either if it's their second property, it might not qualify for an exemption. So or if it's a rental property or something they and they're not living in it, then it might not qualify. And in that case, I'm going to tell them, hey, your property taxes are going to be affected. Do you still want to put it in your trust? And then it's a well, do we want it to go through probate and use a Heggstad petition or do we want to put it in our trust and pay extra taxes? Now, you know, that's up to the client, but I can give you the information. I can't tell you how much the property taxes are going to go up. Maybe you can talk to the assessor and maybe find that out. I'm not sure. Probably not. But I can tell you that it will be affected and so I try to avoid that or at least inform my clients. And again, for those watching, while online discount services have a role, this is why you pay a thousand or more for a professional attorney to do the job properly because this I'm not sure what the difference might be for an average estate, thousand dollars more, $2,000 more saves tens of thousands of dollars that are routinely done by the plans. And I want to say I think [unclear] online trusts never get executed and for sure and I know that they try to follow up with their customers and I know they never get the plan funded properly because I' I've dealt with enough of them to see that those online services that's really their weak link. They

32:00 They save the customer $1,000 and it costs them $20,000 in legal fees down the road. So this is a big thing and for those you watching this I just really pay attention here. Get your pen and pencil out. Make some notes on this one. So I'll Okay. So you do the recording of the deed and the PCOR and you file that with the county. So now at least you know that's been done.

32:18 Yeah. And then I provide my clients with a spreadsheet of their assets. So as we're going through the process of creating their estate plan, we're creating a spreadsheet of all of their assets, how they're owned, what the rough value is, and then when we sign when they sign their documents, I have an additional column. What do you need to do with this particular asset? And that is their instructions. So most maybe some attorneys give instructions on what you need to do in order to what you said fund your trust, right? So it's that's putting your stuff into your trust. You can think of like this is an easy way think of your trust like a keepsake box, right? You have the key to it as a trustee. You open it, you put your stuff into it, and then you lock it and it's in your trust. You can access your stuff whenever you want to with your key. so funding your trust is putting your stuff into your keepsake box and that is the deed on your house, transferring it. That is your bank accounts or at least bank accounts that have significant amount of money. Either updating a beneficiary or payable on death on those or opening a new bank account in the name of the trust is what I often recommend. even though you know it's kind of a pain. you have to update your autopays and all that kind of stuff, but it's I think it's worth it in the end. and then investment accounts, same like beneficiary or sometimes they'll retitle them in the name of the trust so you don't have to close and reopen. what else? Life insurance, you want to update your beneficiaries. Maybe we keep it as the same people, but maybe not.

33:49 But we want to look at it and we want to decide together how that's going to be updated. so all of your all of your assets, whatever they are, cars generally are kept out of the trust because it's a fairly it's always going to be a DMV process. And once you're at the DMV, it's still a pain whether it's in the trust or what it's not.

34:08 Yeah. I tell people that probate is if you don't have a trust, probate is like your entire life being registered with the DMV. It's just not as pleasant as a DMV is. It's not as efficient or customer service as a DMV. So

34:22 Yeah. yeah, and you know the other thing I recently I we made a couple changes where we have certain assets and I went online with accounts we've opened years ago and noticed they had none of the beneficiaries online. I thought that's interesting. I'm sure we fill up paperwork when we did this. and I updated it. But I was thinking, you know, I have customers who tell me all the time they have no records. They can't find the records. Maybe having a copy of the account and the print out with the beneficiaries would be beneficial to say, "Well, no, actually, we took the time to do this." and it's our money and that's what you we expect you to do. But it is interesting how

35:00 And maybe this is part of your practice, too, how difficult these financial institutions are to work with when it's time to get your money out, right? They're very easy to wire money in,

35:09 But you know, you give them instructions and I just find they always lose whatever you sent them. They never have it. it's another right department and get the money out. Sometimes it's like they're they're fighting you. Meanwhile, you pay them service fees. They held your money and such. Talk a little bit about, you know, what that process looks like even when you have everything lined up properly.

35:27 Yeah. Well, that's interesting that you said that because one of the things that I do recommend on our three-year reviews is double-checking all those beneficiaries because like you said, they lose them or maybe the bank was acquired by a new bank and then records were lost, misplaced, whatever. You want to make sure like you're looking at those beneficiaries. Just because you said it when you open the account doesn't mean it's still there. So double check your beneficiaries. If I can send anything away with you today, double check your beneficiaries. Do not name minors as beneficiaries. Those are my two takeaways today for beneficiaries.

35:58 That creates a whole another problem with a minor a whole other can of worms. don't do it. financial adviserss who do it, you know, need a little estate planning advice. So with the financial I mean there's not much that I can do anymore. So I can provide forms but like you said you can go online to your accounts and most accounts you can update beneficiaries now. So it used to be that attorneys would help you fund your trust by filling out the forms, giving you the forms to sign when you come in and then telling you to take them to the bank or something along those lines or mailing them in.

36:34 But like me doing that is more work for me for you because you can go online and do it. So there isn't much to do. And when someone passes away, it can be a huge pain. So if it's not in your trust, if say if it's a bank account that has a beneficiary on it, if it's not, if the bank account is not in your trust and you're not the person listed as a beneficiary, they will tell you nothing. Zero things. Right?

36:59 So right, you have a death certificate. If you're not the beneficiary, they don't care. They're not going to give you any information. So either you need letters from the court saying that you're the admin you're administering the estate or you need to be the person listed as the beneficiary or if the beneficiary is the trust the trust then you need to be the trustee of the trust. So like with my aunt's estate there was a handful of accounts that I knew might be at these banks but I wasn't sure. So I had all her family and friends call to see if they were the ones listed as the beneficiary after I had submitted the death certificates to the institution. So we had to find the right person and there was one Wells Fargo one bank told me that she had this account but she could they couldn't tell me any other information other than that it existed. So we had these people call. Finally, the right person who had been listed as a beneficiary was called and then they told her that it had been closed in 2013.

37:56 You couldn't have just said like these banks, you know, it's crazy. These banks are hacked every week. We hear of another major bank where all information is being distributed, but when you have letters of authority and this that they make your life so difficult. We actually ended up

38:12 I was on an estate where the First Republic when they were getting going out of business and it was a large amount millions of dollars and they dragged their feet long enough to where Chase started to take over then the employees didn't want to do anything because Chase was taking over and then when Chase took over they had their whole layer of administration and we our estate ended up suing Chase to get them to acknowledge that we had an estate we had letters of authority and to make the transfers that we needed to pay employees, customers, and such. And they paid penalties. The estate actually won like $23,000

38:50 To cover legal fees and expenses and lost interest because they were just so careful with our money. Meanwhile, you know, they just they distribute information to all kinds of people all the time. It's just one little things out. Okay. Well, I won't go on too much about that. I guess I did. And we've gone over, you know, Sati, it's been a pleasure. obviously you're a world of information and knowledge. Really pleasant to talk to you. I really appreciate our time together and I can see why family centered is the way you would go because it does require a little extra connection and it requires a little extra care and you seem to have both of those. So thank you so much for spending time with us today.

39:24 Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It really was a pleasure. And for those who want more liveoakestateplanning.com is the website and then down below we also have her contact info. [phone number shown on screen]. She's in Claremont, California, which is LA County, far east part of the county, but place I started my real estate career and yeah, I'm sure you service throughout California and certainly throughout Los Angeles County. So, Sati, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate the chance to go into detail on this stuff with you.

39:54 Thank you. I appreciate you. And for the rest of you, this is [The Estate Planning Podcast]. We get together every week and interview estate planning attorneys and vendors to help us be better in our business. if you know somebody or somebody who wanted to be interviewed, feel free to pass on your information. If you have questions, comments, love to hear them. I'm at Bill Gross Probate on social media. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.