This episode explores the role of estate plans in reflecting changing societal norms, touching on topics such as spousal rights and legal boundaries. Michael Bailey offers a nuanced discussion on how historical legal changes, influenced by civil disobedience and Supreme Court decisions, impact current estate planning practices. Discover how stability in estate laws helps ensure a seamless transfer of assets, while acknowledging the necessary adherence to established legal frameworks.
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.
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Good afternoon. Welcome to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on 560 KLZ. So we can do something besides just leave your family alone. You could also be listening on 100.7 FM or the KLZ 560 radio app. Or if you’re Luke, you can listen and hear everything before anybody else. Because Luke sends it all out so that we can, everybody else can hear. Because without Luke, I’d just be talking into the void of this room and it wouldn’t be so great. 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. Once again, 720-394-6887. So I had a client who I just talked to on the way here who needs his will redone. He sent me a whole thing where he’d redlined it all using the Microsoft Word track changes. And it’s always funny that the Microsoft Word track changes has the red lines and crossed off. And I’m like, it kind of brings me back to being a kid and turning into paper. And it came back with red pen all over it. And you feel like everything’s terrible and horrible and things like that. And I’m like, look, I promise I’m not nearly as terrible as you seem to think I am. But he was just… One of his kids had died, so we were removing large sections. So there was a lot of the red line there. And I’m like, OK, you know, even though as a kid it meant you were in trouble or things didn’t go well, I guess not what it actually means. But one of the things that he was very concerned about was he’s like, Oh, this section reads like a lawyer. It’s really hard to understand for a non-lawyer. Can’t you rewrite it so it’s understandable by a non-lawyer? And I’m like, Well, let’s talk about that. There are certain words and certain phrases and certain ways of saying things that we use as attorneys, not because we’re trying to confuse somebody, but because they’re the prescribed language from the state legislature or the Supreme Court. And there are certain words and phrases that we use from other places and other types of language. Some of the language we use for trusts. comes from what the IRS tells us we should use, because if we’re talking about tax ramifications of things and the IRS says, hey, you should do this, we go, okay, we’ll follow what the IRS says because they make those rules and we don’t. And every once in a while, I’ve run across somebody who gets really concerned that you know they don’t like the way that something’s written and they want it done differently and when i say things like well you know i appreciate what you’re saying and i understand what you’re saying and i wish it were a little bit more plain and simple and easy to understand too but the rules are we’re supposed to say it this way you know People who can understand that, they may not love it, but people who get really upset about it are like, no, it needs to be this way. I’m like, okay, we may not be quite on the same page then because as powerful as I think I am, and I don’t think I’m very powerful at all, I don’t have the ability to tell the state legislature or the Supreme Court how I should – do things and how they should interpret things. I have some clients who they’re like, oh, well, you know, we live and we do this and we want you to do this. And I’m like, well, hold on just a minute. So you’re telling me that you really want me to write into your will the status of your relationship and, you know, the single, married, they’re like, well, no, we have a polyamorous relationship, so we want you to write down that they’re married here, but we have a polyamorous relationship. I’m like, that doesn’t have legal status, and it doesn’t need to go into a will. It’s not something that needs to be there. And, you know, I, that was my response to a particular client and they haven’t gotten back to me, but I almost wonder if they were hoping that somehow I would put that into a will and that somehow that would force then the. the courts to recognize their polyamorous relationship even though it’s not a it doesn’t have a legal status that is recognizable i’m like so i don’t know really that a will is going to be a function of social change And I’m probably not going to be the right attorney to handle things if you’re looking for somebody who’s going to try to be an agent of social change. It’s just not really the right place or the right spot to do it. You know, a will is about what happens to your stuff when you die, who gets it and who’s in charge so that that can hopefully move as easily and smoothly as possible to transfer assets. I’m not looking to change the world and change the laws through a will that I write. And I think some people, most people seem to understand that every once in a while with somebody who’s trying to push the boundaries of social issues, whether it’s a person who is a transgender person and wants to have the proper pronouns in a will, I’m like, great, I can do that. What would you want me to write? Okay, I can do that. That’s cool. We’re fine. A marital relationship, I mean, just married versus unmarried, mostly has to do with there’s a statute that talks about how Your spouse is entitled to a certain percentage of your assets when you die, even if you try to cut them off completely. So a spouse, if you’ve been married for one year, they’re entitled to 5% of your assets. Two years, 10%, and increasing 5% per year up until you’ve been married for 10 years or longer, and then your spouse is entitled to at least 50% of your assets. And that’s, of course, based on the longevity of your marriage and things like that. And that’s when you die, not when you’re alive. And ha-ha, I need half of your assets. Let’s go. So I’m not making a statement about family law or if you were to get divorced, what your percentage would be because that’s a totally different game and totally different set of rules than what I’m talking about. But the spousal protection statute is there so that you don’t cut your spouse off completely, right? So if you do in your will or trust try to cut your spouse off completely, they can then petition the court to get their percentage that they would have gotten or that they were entitled to under the spousal protection statutes. And so that’s kind of the point in the function of you’re married or not married. It doesn’t have anything to do with an agent of social change or anything like that. I mean, you know, I’ve seen, you know, when the, I don’t remember, I think it was something about a tax return when the homosexual marriage, that’s what kind of prompted that, that pushed, you know, all the way up to the Supreme Court to change the rules or the constitutional protections of marriage. to be able for for opposite sex and for same-sex couples and you know that’s if that’s how it started with the tax return that seems somewhat innocuous but it ended up being a supreme court level decision that changed the law of the land well i in an estate plan we’re i’m trying not to be you know we’re just trying to get your stuff where it’s going we’re not trying to be agents of social change or anything like that So it’s kind of the wrong place to be trying to do it. So you are listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on 560 KLZ, 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 my direct line is 720-394-6887. And once again, 720-394-6887. And I think sometimes people who are worried about social change and changing the world and things like that, I think sometimes they forget that there may be some negative consequences to such things. I mean, I think of going back to civil disobedience, which I believe was, how was that, Ralph Waldo Emerson, or was it one of the other writers, and Martin Luther King, you know, talking about civil disobedience. So they were going to try to affect change in society through the courts and through laws. So if they couldn’t necessarily convince the state legislature to do something or the national legislature, the Congress, they would then resort to the courts to try to get that change made and see if the courts could reinterpret something or the courts could say, hey, this law or this interpretation goes against the fundamental freedoms and fairness provided by our Constitution. But the idea of civil disobedience is, of course, that you you disobey the law and you do something that will get you in trouble with the law and that then you litigate that question of law throughout the courts and all the way up to the Supreme Court in an attempt to get the law changed. And so things like if you were Rosa Parks and you sat in the front of the bus as opposed to the back of the bus, well, if Rosa Parks was arrested for doing so and you know so you know various other you know where there was you know kind of civil rights movement and you know you’re going to go you’re going to sit in at a lunch counter that was segregated and so now we have a segregated lunch counter that’s being integrated by people who aren’t supposed to be there well the person’s going to go they’re going to you know break the law by sitting down where they shouldn’t be sitting or at least according to the law and and then that needed to work its way you know it’s not like you’re going to go oh well i’m in the deep south of mississippi i’m going to go sit at a lunch counter and the the local judge will be like hey you know what that rule is wrong the local judge was probably more in favor of the current rules as written and so then they’d be like okay we’ll go to an appeals court appeals court is still a little bit more regional and then you go to a supreme court the supreme court can be a little bit less And influenced by local politics to say, well, you know, we think it might be fundamentally unfair for somebody to be able to sit at a lunch counter based on the color of their skin or, you know, in other times, you know, the women’s suffrage movement of women. Oh, well, women can’t vote. Well, based on your man versus woman, you can or cannot vote or you can or cannot hold property or you can or cannot have a bank account. And based on the color of your skin, you can or cannot sit at a lunch counter or use a restroom or things like that. And the Supreme Court can look at those and say, hey, you know, fundamentally, under our Constitution, we want to have equal rights. So we think maybe that those types of rules are necessary. unfairly discriminatory and should not be involved as part of what we’re doing in laws. And you can make the argument whether or not race versus sex versus gender versus Other things are immutable characteristics that you can’t change because that’s kind of the idea is, hey, if you have an immutable characteristic that you can’t change, then that characteristic should not be the basis for discrimination. Now, I did have a, when I was in my constitutional law class, you know, I had a classmate who said, well, you know, the Constitution says no discrimination ever, period. That’s the end. That’s all we have to know. And I’m like, well, it might be a little bit more than that. Because, you know, there’s legal discrimination, there’s illegal discrimination. You know, discrimination based on race or sex or national creed, illegal. Discrimination based on whether or not you have a dog so you can enter a restaurant. You know, if I’m out walking my dog and I walk by a restaurant, the restaurant is perfectly legally entitled to say, no, you cannot bring your dog in our restaurant. That is legal discrimination against someone who is a dog owner and walking with a dog. And, you know, I mean, I can totally understand that. You know, I love my dogs. I treat my dogs as family members. But I don’t think that my dogs need to go everywhere with me. You know, if I go into a McDonald’s or a Wendy’s, I don’t think that it is my fundamental freedom and fundamental right to bring my dog with me. And, you know, for people who have a, you know, sometimes there’s a little bit of an argument between dog people and cat people. Well, if you bring your cat into the same McDonald’s or Wendy’s, the McDonald’s or the Wendy’s is allowed to say, hey, no, maybe we don’t need a cat or a dog here or a gerbil or a hamster or a rat or a parrot or a, you know, I don’t know what other kind of pets we have, a horse or a llama or an emu, you know, whatever. About a block and a half up from where we are, there’s some people who they own land in between the two housing developments. And they’ve kind of kept it as their own little farm, their own little slice of heaven, as they say. And they have a llama and they have some goats and they used to have an emu. And they’ve had cows from time to time. So especially when my kids were younger, we’d go up and play with the animals on the farm and things like that. But there’s no fundamental right for me to bring my cow or my sheep or my goat or my dog or my cat into a restaurant or if I’m going to go visit grandma in the hospital. I’m not going to be like, hey, I need to bring in the dog into the hospital. The hospital is allowed to say no. Actually, when I was 21, I was in the hospital after having gotten hurt, and I had not seen my dog in two years because I’d been in Russia for two years. So my parents brought the dog over to the hospital. And so then we put me in a wheelchair and we went down to the first floor and went outside. It was July, so it was nice and warm. But we went outside and my mom had come to get me and bring the wheelchair down and my dad was out there. And so we went into the little, in the parking lot, there was a little bit of a kind of walking sitting area where there was some grass and stuff. And so I got to see my puppy dog for the first time in a couple of years. And that was kind of fun. That was very exciting to see my dog. You know, I was hoping to come home and see the dog, not have to go straight to the hospital after my travels to Russia. But, you know, that’s not how it worked out. But the dog was not invited into the hospital to… see me so i had to go outside to see the dog and that’s fair you know there’s not there’s not a fundamental right to anything you know to bring your dog in to bring your dog out so that’s just one example of legal discrimination so the constitution doesn’t necessarily you know um prohibit any and all forms of discrimination there are certain classes of things that we don’t want to discriminate against and on the basis of you know like race or sex or you know national origin so you know I mean my last name is Bailey I probably have some good English and Irish ancestors. I happen to know that I’ve got ancestors from England, Ireland, France, Germany, almost all of the countries in Europe, even before they were countries in Europe. My mom has traced one line back to Aragoth the Conqueror II, who was born in 199 A.D., So she hasn’t been able to find a record of Aragoth the Conqueror, but there’s got to be an Aragoth the Conqueror if there was an Aragoth the Conqueror II. It’s hard to have a second without an original. From 199 AD, there’s not a lot of wonderful records that have been kept. There wasn’t quite the record keeping and not a lot of electronic databases of records. who was born when and who conquered whom at that point you know so you know maybe we’ll find it but you know aragoth the conqueror the second of who lived in one who was born in 199 a.d didn’t really belong to any of the current countries of europe because they didn’t exist so there’s lots of different things there but as we’re setting up an estate plan and setting up things We’re not trying to change the world. We’re not trying to change the laws. We’re just trying to make sure that your stuff gets from where you want it to go, from where you have it to where you want it to go. So you are listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on KLZ 560 AM. Also heard on 100.7 FM or on the KLZ 560 radio app. Phone number to talk to me in the air is 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 as we’re trying to set up an estate plan, am I trying to be an agent of social change? Am I trying to be an agent of changing the rules and the laws and things like that? Not really. I’m just trying to make it as easy as possible for you to get your stuff from you to where you want it to go. Because if we’re trying to… if we’re trying to change, um, the rules and we’re trying to change the laws and we’re trying to be an agent of social change and things like that, um, that’s going to take a long time. That’s going to, uh, um, just it’s, it’s going to be an interesting one to have a, uh, a to definitely have, if that’s what you’re trying to do is you’re like, oh, I’m going to do something in my will and I’m going to make it so that then it will get litigated all the way through the courts and up to the Supreme Court. Generally, that’s going to take years to do. And if it’s going to take years to do, it may not be what you’re truly wanting to do. If your goal for an estate plan is to get your assets from you as the deceased person to your children or your heirs. In a timely manner or as quickly as possible. Most people who are setting up an estate plan, they don’t want to have to wait long periods of time to get assets. The kids don’t want to wait a long period of time. So if mom and dad die, they’re not like, oh, gee, let’s hope that we can have this money all tied up for the next decade. You know, 10, 12 years where we work our way through litigation and appeals and everything to get to the Supreme Court so that we can change things. That’s really not what most people are interested in. Most people that I meet are interested with, hey, mom and dad died. They don’t have a ton of money. So how can we get that? Um, you know, how can we get that money sooner rather than later? So, you know, mom and dad die and you’re like, okay, we’ve got a house. We need to sell the house. Well, you know, that’s makes sense. A lot of times when mom and dad die, kids have their own houses, so they don’t need to hold on to mom and dad’s house. You know, it’s just a big asset that, especially if you let it sit there for too long, it’ll fall into disrepair. So they’re more interested in getting assets from them or from mom and dad to the kids and getting it quicker and sooner than years and decades down the road. And the reason it can take decades is because you have one round of litigation and then one side wins. And then you’re like, oh, we need to appeal to the next level. So you appeal to the next level and they take the appeal and then they decide one way and they say they might even say, oh, we’re going to go, we’re going to send this back down to the trial court for new trial, new information. So you do that and then you still don’t get the outcome you want. So then you have to appeal again. And then somebody gets the outcome they do or do not want say, oh, well, we’re going to go ahead and appeal to the Supreme Court now. And there’s just it’s back and forth. And the law isn’t exactly known for moving quickly. it’s not exactly known for being the most responsive profession ever. It’s just not quite how it works because the law can move slowly and it’s, the law is kind of, it’s a, it can be an agent of change, but it’s a slow agent of change because the law tends to like the status quo and And this law tends to not want to change all the time simply because too many quick changes in the law can make it hard to have laws be predictable and understandable. And if we enjoy the rule of law like we seem to in the United States, we want things to be predictable and understandable and not be predictable. you know wildly fluctuating back and forth it’s one of the really nice parts about estate planning law is that it tends to be pretty stable we don’t have huge changes in how we can leave things and how we can give things away and how we can transfer assets to our children you know there’s there’s some variations but there’s not a whole lot of um it’s not a whole lot of uh things to um there’s just we want it to be fairly stable we don’t want it to be oh we’re going to wildly fluctuate between oh well you need a will okay well we’ve got a will what can we do with it well no now it’s too late we need to do you know something else it’s The will is no longer the way to do it. We know we’ve done wills for hundreds, if not thousands of years, but now suddenly we’re going to have a whole new way where you have to enter your wishes in a database that you can only access by downloading the What Happens to Your Stuff When You Die app, which is published by XYZ Corporation, who has a contract with the state. And then everybody goes… wait a minute, we’ve all set our estate plans up just on paper and ink, and we signed them. Now we have to use this app. This is weird. And then so everybody goes in and does the app. And then XYZ Corporation becomes unfavored. They’re no longer the darling of the state legislature. The state legislature says, well, we now need to do it on a different app from ABC Corporation. And of course, XYZ Corporation, ABC Corporation aren’t cooperating with each other. So they’re not going to share data. So you have to redo everything the way that you did it the first time. And those types of switching back and forth and changes, they do happen. And they happen in the law sometimes. A lot of times it’ll happen when a company will switch from one system to another that they use to keep track of customers. Or I’ve seen it with grocery stores where they had one sort of rewards type of program and they switched over to another one. So you have to re-register and do all those type of things. And it’s just… The back and forth and the switching can be disconcerting. It can be difficult. And in an estate plan, you’re trying to keep things where you’re like, hey, I want to do an estate plan so that it’ll work over the next several decades, not have to be switched around all the time. And for the most part, it’s a fairly steady, stable environment. But we still have to follow the rules and set things up so that they work the way we want them to. So the music tells me that my time is up. So I will say thank you so much for listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on 560KLZ. My phone number, once again, 720-394-6887. And again, that’s 720-394-6887. Please give me a call if you’d like to talk about your own estate plan. But as for right now, I’m out of time. So thanks so much for listening. Stay tuned for John Rush and Rush to Reason next. And we’ll talk to you later. Thanks and bye.
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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.
