In this episode of Mobile Estate Planning, host Michael Bailey addresses the common holiday rush to complete estate plans. Many clients feel the pressure to start or finish their estate planning before the year’s end, but Michael shares his insights on why proper estate planning should not be rushed. He explains his process, the time it requires, and why it’s essential to plan accordingly to ensure everything is carried out smoothly. Michael intertwines personal anecdotes about balancing family commitments during the holiday while maintaining his professional responsibilities. He discusses the importance of making time for both and shares stories
Welcome to Mobile Estate Planning with your host, Michael Bailey. Over a decade ago, attorney Michael Bailey turned his attention to estate law after he recognized the unacceptable number of adults without proper end-of-life planning. Michael recognizes that many of his clients have difficulty finding the time for making a proper estate plan. That’s why he became the Mobile Estate Planner. He will go to wherever you are to assist you with your estate planning, including writing wills, trusts, and giving you the information you need to avoid probate. Now, ATX, Ask the Experts, presents Mobile Estate Planning with your host, Michael Bailey.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good afternoon. Welcome to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey. So we can do something besides just leave your family alone. You’re listening to KLZ 560 AM, also heard on 100.7 FM or the KLZ 560 radio app. Phone number to talk to me on the air is 303-477-5600. And again, that’s 303-477-5600. And again, that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. Once again, that’s 720-394-6887. So last week I said, well, I’ll be back in a couple weeks. I’m like, wait a minute. I’m off by a week. I think that the Thanksgiving holiday coming the last Thursday, we all thought we had an extra week in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which is Part of why Christmas shopping are like, ah, we still need to do that or we need to do this or, you know, just kind of threw things off a little bit. And, you know, next week is Christmas. And then the week after that, I believe, is New Year’s Day. So I probably won’t be back for a couple of weeks. And, you know, just if you really need your estate planning fix, I can’t think of anybody who would need their estate planning fix. Can you think of anybody, Luke, who might need their estate planning fix on Christmas and or New Year’s Day? I don’t I don’t know. You don’t know? I don’t know who might or might not. I just can’t think that there’s something that would be, you know, you’re like, really, Christmas Day? You’re going to think about your own estate plan? It’s fine to think about, but do you really need to listen to a radio show about it? I don’t think so. No, probably not. It seems like that would be excessive. But, you know, that’s just me. So but as we get towards the end of the year, it’s amazing how many people are pretty sure that they either need to finish their estate plan by the end of the year or both start and finish it by the end of the year. Because, you know, December 18th is the greatest time ever or the 19th or the 20th to try to set up your estate plan. I mean, there’s there’s not a bad time to set up your estate plan unless it’s too late. There’s also, you know, and it’s also not like a perfect time to do so. I mean, when you do, it is the best time. But it’s kind of funny to me that people will call and they’re like, oh, well, you know, I need to get my estate plan. I need to, you know, I need to get it done by the end of the year. And I’m like, well. you might need to look for somebody else who has earlier availability than I do. And that’s simply because it does take time to do an estate plan. And as much as I’d like to be able to work and get everything done for people by the end of the year, It usually takes me a couple of weeks to put together a draft copy because once I get information and talk to you, I’ll send it off to my paralegal and she’ll draft things and get back to me. And I give her a couple of weeks to put together a draft copy. So I don’t really, I mean, so this yesterday and today I’ve been telling people like, well, or like last week, tell people like, well, you know, two weeks from today is Christmas and I’m mean, but I’m not that mean. I probably will not make my paralegal work on Christmas. It just seems like a bad idea. Yeah. So if it’s a couple of extra days past the two weeks and people are like, yeah, I totally get that. I’m like, that’s cool. But there’s something about the person who hasn’t planned ahead and is panicking a little bit that when I say I’m not available any time before the end of the year, they seem to somehow get… You know, it’s almost like they were hoping that I was, and I don’t know if I was like their last chance or if they thought that I would be able to, you know, get them in and accommodate them. But my days are booked from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. You know, today I have an appointment at 4 o’clock to get a trust signed. And then I’m leaving from there and I’m going to the airport to pick up my daughter from the airport. She is 45. finished with finals and she is flying in tonight so we’ll have her home for a couple of weeks from college and then we can send her back but in the meantime it’s uh you know i’m when people like oh you know i really need this done can i meet with you at like 5 30 or 6 and i’m like nope not today And, you know, other days I’m like, well, they’re like, you know, so today I pick up my daughter at 640 from the airport. Tomorrow my middle daughter, the 15-year-old, has a volleyball scrimmage that runs from 515 until 715. Well, I have an appointment in the tech center from 4 to 5, and then I’m supposed to be in Broomfield by 515 tomorrow. So I’m guessing I’ll be late to that one unless if everybody’s listening and they would like to just pull off to the side of I-25 and Highway 36 that I can just drive as fast as I want. I pretend like I’m an emergency vehicle or something. I would appreciate that. But I don’t think anybody’s going to do that for me. I think they all have places they need to get to. And then Friday night, I have a basketball game to officiate. So I’ll referee that. It’s just, you know, my nights and my evenings are spoken for by family. Okay. And, you know, people are like, well, you know, I work during the day. Can you meet in the evening or the weekends? I’m like, no, just can’t do it. Don’t have… I mean, this last Saturday, I was in charge of our Christmas party at the church. So I was there about 7.30 in the morning. So I had a basketball game to officiate. I finished about 9. Got to the church at 9.15. Set things up until 10.20. Went home. Well, actually… One of the other guys wanted to go to In-N-Out Burger because it’s his favorite place to go. So we were convinced to go get In-N-Out at 1030 at night because why wouldn’t you get a hamburger at 1030? I’m really. And so we did that. And then I was up. And so I was back at the church about 730 the next morning and I set up for an hour and a half. Got things ready, and then from about 8.30 to 9.45, I was scrambling eggs and cooking scrambled eggs. I scrambled 120 eggs for the party. I bought 180 eggs, but not everybody showed up, so we didn’t have as many that we needed to do. But still, so for an hour and 15 minutes, I stood in scrambled eggs and made scrambled eggs. Because everybody knows that the perfect breakfast for Christmas is, of course, scrambled eggs with bacon, ham, and cheese and or sausage on them. So that’s what we did. We had a scrambled egg bar. And then we had everybody bring like their favorite cinnamon roll or orange roll or other sweet treat. And so they could eat both. And, you know, that was and then we did that and we sang some Christmas songs, some Christmas carols. And then we had a visit from a visitor from the North Pole who came and did that. And so that’s what I did until about 11. Well, we finished about 1030 and then I was. Cleaning up till about 1115, and then I had to leave to go get my daughter from volleyball practice. And then later that night, one of the other church congregations, the person who was going to be that special visitor from the North Pole, was unable to do so. So they called me and asked if I would be able to be a fill-in. And so later that night I was. So I spent… four or five hours on our own Christmas party, and then another couple at somebody else’s Christmas party, helping people out, serving people of our church congregation. And those were good things to do, but it did mean that somebody who wanted me to start on their estate plan last Saturday was going to be out of luck for no reason other than I was busy. So you are listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on KLZ 560 AM, also heard on 100.7 FM or the KLZ 560 radio app. The phone number to talk to me on the air is 303-477-5600. And again, that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. And once again, 720-394-6887. Now, I tell you this story is not to be like, look, I’m so busy and I can’t possibly help you. I’m like, no, I want to help you. I want to help as many people as I can as quickly as I can. And I want to be able to do that, but I also want to do it the right way. And I don’t want to sacrifice what else needs to be done or, you know, don’t want to sacrifice. I mean, obviously we, we go off to, uh, when we go off to various, um, places to do things with family. And every time I go to work, I’m, you know, my family is, you know, my kids are in school right now. Um, my wife is either working or doing other stuff. So it’s not like you have to say, well, I’m going to spend every moment with my family is in every moment with everybody else. But, um, there, you know, if I, if I’m working during the day, it’s nice to see my family in the evenings and in the, on the weekends because they’re important and need to be taken care of too. I mean, ultimately that’s why we’re doing an estate plan anyways, to take care of our families because If I set up my will or my trust, I’ve done both, and I’ve got everything set up, it’s like, well, why do I care? If I’m dead and gone, why does it matter? I’m like, well, first of all, I do love my wife and I want to take care of her. So if I die… I don’t want her to leave her with a mess going, well, wait a minute, who’s supposed to get what and how do we transfer ownership and, you know, how do we access the bank accounts and who’s going to, you know, is life insurance going to pay out? Do we even have life insurance? You know, how do I pay for the house? How do I pay for kids? You know, what do I do? Well, you know, there is life insurance that does pay out and that would help pay off the house. It would help pay for the kids. You know, all of those things are there. All those things exist. And we go, okay, well, we’ve got all those wonderful things. That’s awesome. But how do we and what do we do with that? And how do we make that work? How do we make that properly accessible? accomplish what we want and you know how do we have it all laid out so that my wife who hopefully will be sad if I go you know hopefully she would grieve me and not like be celebratory but if she was celebratory that’s fine too but as we I don’t want her to be trying to navigate all this legal stuff and trying to figure everything out when Um, we’re trying to, you know, right after having lost me. So we’ve got that in place. Now also we lose, you know, what, what if my wife and I are both past both pass away? Now we’re, you know, not necessarily young. We’re not necessarily old. We’re kind of in the middle of somewhere. I felt really old moving my daughter into her dorm in August when I took her to college. I’m like, I swear I was just here, just graduated from here a couple weeks ago, and why in the world do I now have an 18-year-old? It just didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. But I do understand how those things go and how that works. And I’m not upset about it or anything. I’m just like, oh, right, okay, we can’t. But since I’m in the middle somewhere, I’m not young, I’m not old, but I do need an estate plan. I need it set up so that I know what’s going to happen to things. Now, if I were to die, right now I have an 18-year-old, so she could technically take over everything. But I don’t necessarily want my 18-year-old to be saddled with that responsibility. Now, she could handle it. Including raising her siblings and all those type of things. She’s mature enough to handle it. But she’s also a freshman in college. And she’s had all sorts of fun going to football games and volleyball games and joining pre-med clubs and doing her homework. And she’s been pretty successful. She had one final that she didn’t do as well on it as she had hoped. And we’re like, well, you know, kiddo, there’s we all kind of do that sometimes when you’re in college or in my case, college and law school, you have a final where you’re like, oh, that did not go the way that I’d hoped it would. But what can you do? You can’t go. We don’t have time machines. We cannot go back in time and fix things. So instead, we say, all right, well, what do we do? And for her, when she did poorly on this final, she was very concerned about it, and she called us, and we’re like, well, you know, there’s not much we can do about that particular final. But you do want to be a little bit careful about how you let this final affect the rest of your finals. So… we talked about how it was okay to be sad about the final, but then it was time, but then you can’t be, couldn’t be sad about it and let it drag down your other finals. Like, okay, well that one’s done. You have three more you need to take. So you need to just go study for those and do the best you can and work on them. And that way you won’t let one error compound its way into a whole bunch of other errors. And she seemed to understand that. And I’m like, well, this is part of the life lessons that, um, And my wife – I didn’t say that to her, but I said to my wife, I’m like, is this part of the life lessons that you learn from going to college or growing up is that you can’t let one bad thing that happens affect everything else? I mean, clearly, people are impacted by things that happen. And if I – The day after I lost my puppy dog, I think it was the day after, I remember I came in and I was supposed to do this show. And so I didn’t really talk about estate planning. I talked about the puppy dog the whole time. And since it’s my show and I can talk about what I want, it was good for me to talk about the puppy dog that I had to say goodbye to. Now, Not everybody loves puppy dogs the way that I do, and not everybody who has a puppy dog would be quite as sad as I was to lose their puppy dog. You know, just everybody has different ways that they deal with things. Everybody has different emotional attachments and things like that. You know, for my wife, it was the first puppy dog that we’d had from, we bought her as a puppy and then she was almost 14 when she passed away. The puppy dog, not the wife. And wife is still alive, which is good because I like her and she likes me and it’s a good thing. But the… When we lost the puppy dog, she, growing up, sometimes animals would come to their house, but they only lasted like six to 12 months, and then they would go live on the farm, meaning my father-in-law would give them away. He’s just not a huge fan of animals, at least not them living in his house and possibly getting hair on his furniture or not having perfectly manicured carpet and things like that. So. So when we lost the puppy dog, it was the first puppy dog my wife had had from a puppy dog all the way up to an old dog and then passing away. And she was very, very sad because she had kind of convinced herself that the dog was never going to die. Well, the dog, you know, it’s the nature of dogs. They do pass away. You know, they don’t last for forever. We got her for almost 14 years. And our current dog, one of them, is now older than that dog was. This is the dog that was always the comfort and the friend to my 18-year-old. My 18-year-old, when she was younger, she was like, I can’t sleep. I need a dog. So she’d take this dog and take now the old dog and go off to her room and the dog would sleep in the bed with her and you know, kind of help her and comfort her. We were very concerned that now that she is an older dog that she would be so sad from her friend going off to school and not being home for three months at a time that she was very concerned we would lose this dog to sadness. Because when we did lose the puppy dog almost six years ago, the current one just kind of stopped eating. She’s like, nope, I’m very sad. I’m going to give up on this. We’re like, eh, it’s not good. And then we were concerned at Thanksgiving that the older puppy dog would be so excited that she would have a, you know, her heart would give out when she was so excited to see her new friend, her friend come back. That didn’t happen either. And, you know, we’re like, okay, it might not be connected to. our daughter going off to college when we do lose the puppy dog. But, you know, she is also coming, she’s like 14 years old. So now we have a puppy dog that we’re like, well, if she passes away, it’s not because kiddo went off to school or came back. It’s because she is 14 and that’s a decently long lifestyle, lifestyle. for a dog. It is a small dog. It’s not a big dog, but still. So, you know, just thinking about dogs and estate planning, we’ll talk about that in a second. But right now, just remember, you’re listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on KLZ 560. Also heard on FM 100.7 or the KLZ 560 radio app. Phone number to talk to me on the air is 303-477-5600. And again, that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. And once again, that’s 720-394-6887. My dogs are kind of part of the family. I consider that I have three human children, I have two canine children, and one departed canine child. And, you know, yes, I spoil my dogs a little bit. That’s what I do because they’re dogs and they’re great and they’re wonderful and they deserve it. And, you know, the dog’s not going to go, when we got our first dog before we had our first child, we were like, well, it can be our practice kid. And if we screw it up, the dog’s not going to go on Oprah and talk about it. All the terrible, horrible things that we did to the dog. Yeah, the dogs can just be like, hey, will you feed me? Cool. I want another treat. Here you go. Can I have a toy? Sure. Okay. I love you. That’s great. Dogs are a little bit less… a little bit less demanding, a little bit less entitled than say children, for instance, you know, and I have great kids and my kids are really not entitled, but they do ask for a little bit more than the, uh, the kids would, or then the dogs would, you know, the dogs are like, Hey, if you give me a treat and you take me out on a walk and you scratch my tummy then, or pet me, I’m the happiest creature in the entire world. I’m like, yeah, I can live with that. You know, we, They love it when we watch a football game or a basketball game because we’ll just sit down and they’ll sit and we can sit and pet them because we’re kind of sitting in the same place for an hour or two or three or four with a football game. They’re just super excited that we’re there and we can pet them. And if we stop petting them, they will let us know. They’ll pet us back. It’s more in the form of a scratch, but still. But my dogs are kind of family members and are treated as such and loved as such. And not everybody’s dog is quite that same way. But my estate plan also says… If my wife and I die and you take my kids, you also have to take my dogs because I don’t want to separate out the kids and the dogs. Now, there are people who, I mean, I’ve heard of it happening where Somebody dies and then they will go and they will euthanize the dog and like bury the dog with the person or, you know, combine their ashes and things like that. And I’m like, I don’t think I need to do that. I don’t even if I’m gone, I don’t necessarily want my puppy dog to need to, you know, have their life ended just because mine did. That just seems mean. Doesn’t seem like a good idea. But I also whenever my I’ve had people like, oh, you know, how come dogs can’t live as long as humans? I’m like, well, for this reason, you know, if I’m 46 and I buy a dog, I expect it to live 10, 12, maybe 15 years. well i expect to outlive the dog well if i was 40 and i bought a dog that was going to live for 70 years let’s say that i lived from 40 to age 70 and then i died age 70 the dog now has another 40 years to live so if the dog spent 30 years living with me and learning to you know love me as its master and i would take care of it Then I’m like, oh, halfway through the dog’s life, I’m like, hey, guess what? You get to figure out how to live your life at somebody else’s house and with somebody else taking care of you. And the dog’s like, wait a minute, what’s going on here? Now, I think the dog, after 30 years with me and 40 years with somebody else, the dog would probably adjust. But I don’t know that I would want to subject a dog to that many years of trying to adjust to new humans and things like that. My oldest daughter is like, oh, did your monkeys pick you up and carry you around? Are the monkeys trying to tell you what to do? Because I’m like, yeah, if we’re big giant monkeys and we have the dogs, I’m like, yes, I’m bigger than you. I can pick you up. And my dogs are small dogs. I have a West Highland Terrier and a half Westie, half Yorkie. So they’re each 12 to 14 pounds. And it’s pretty easy for me to be able to pick them up and, um, carry them around or pet them. Or when they fight, pull them away from each other. When they’re fighting, you’re like, you grab from the back, kind of back legs back around the stomach and kind of pull them apart. You don’t put your hand in the middle of where they’re chomping. Otherwise they will chomp you. Or, I mean, I’ve never had that happen and neither has anybody else. So I don’t know what I’m talking about, except for I speak from experience. Right. But, uh, You know, and people are like, oh, I want to leave everything to my dog. I’m like, well, you know, I guess you hear stories about celebrities who left everything to their pets. I’m like, well, here’s the thing. Under Colorado law, you can’t leave everything outright to your pets. You can create a pet trust to take care of the pets, but even that you can only last for however long it lasts. And mine just says, if you take my kids, you take my dogs and they’ll take care of you. Now you can take care of dogs and my kids. And that meant that we had to pick somebody to raise the kids who would be okay also with having the dogs. Because if I were to send my kids to my father-in-law and mother-in-law to be raised, they wouldn’t want the dogs. It wouldn’t go well. So they’re not the ones that we picked. We picked somebody else who would be able to handle the dogs and the kids. Because when somebody passes away, you don’t want to necessarily just saddle somebody with a terrible, horrible burden of all of these things, but rather you want to do what would be good for them and you want to do what’s best for the kids and what’s best for the dogs and what’s best for everybody involved and not just say, oh, well, we’re going to screw this up or we’re going to dictate this is how it has to be or something along those lines. That’s just not what you’re able or wanting or trying to do. You’re trying to do what’s best for them, not what’s worse for them. That’s the whole point of estate planning is to set something up that will work well for the people who are left behind. Will it work for your kids? Will it work for your relatives? Will it work for those who are bringing things behind? There’s plenty of movies and stories of all the terrible, horrible things that happened. if somebody died and oh well now these people are taking over there’s all sorts of things there but we don’t want your story to be the basis of a movie of how many horrible things happened to your children so when you’re setting up your estate plan you’re trying to do it we’ve got Christmas coming up in a week trying to give your kids that final gift of how can we take care of you so that things go well So that’s, I think my music is telling me that I’m running out of time. So thank you so much for listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on 560 KLZ AM. John Rush and Rush Reason up next, and I will be back in a couple of weeks in the new year. So thanks so much for listening. Thanks and have a great day. Bye-bye.
SPEAKER 01 :
Mobile estate planning with Michael Bailey will return to ATX next Wednesday at 2.30 here on KLZ 560, AM 560, FM 100.7, and online at klzradio.com.
