Join Michael Bailey as he dives into the intricacies of crafting a deeply personalized estate plan that truly reflects your individual needs and wishes. Discover why there’s no one-size-fits-all solution in estate planning, and the importance of appointing a capable personal representative who can navigate your financial affairs efficiently. Michael also discusses humorous (yet serious) scenarios in estate planning, from leaving assets to unexpected relatives to the now-notorious Big Mattress Investment Program. Explore the essentials of legal language in estate documents and why certain phrases, although seemingly superfluous, are vital for the plan’s effectiveness. Michael debunks the myths surrounding
00:00:04 Introduction to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey
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 01 :
Good afternoon. Welcome to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on 560 KLZ AM 100.7 FM or the KLZ 560 radio app so that we can do something besides just leave your family alone. Phone number to talk to me on the air is 303-477-5600. And once again, that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. Once again, 720-394-6887. I probably will not answer that line for the next hour or half an hour while I’m on the air. But that’s just because I’m talking right now. And it’s hard to have individual conversations and estate planning conversations at the same time. But an estate plan is individualized. It is customized. It reflects your wishes. It’s your estate plan. Now I get lots of people who will say, oh, well, you know, what’s typical or what is, what do most people do? And I’m like, there’s no such thing as typical. There’s no such thing as what most people do because everybody’s different. And, you know, sometimes people will press me on that and, you know, we can have a little bit of fun with it. Like, well, you know, typically people understand that I’m super awesome and super nice and they want to leave everything to my kids and not to their own kids. but you may not be typical and that may not be what you want to do.” And people are like, yeah, that doesn’t make sense. I’m like, of course it doesn’t make sense. We want you to leave your assets to whom you want and not to whom I would want. I mean, at least I’m giving them, trying to give them to my kids as opposed to me, because I’m like, yeah, I don’t necessarily feel like I need to take people’s assets. That seems like a bad idea. It’s kind of like when I tell people when I’m doing a trust, I’m like, I’ll write you a pour over will, spelled P-O-U-R, not P-O-O-R. I’m like, if you want to be a pour, you can just write me a check for all your money and we’ll call it good and we’ll never have to speak to each other again. This is what we call a bad idea. We don’t want to do that. We want your assets to go where you want them to go. That’s why it’s your estate plan. And so, you know, sometimes I feel like a little bit that I’m trying to convince people of that. And I’m like, okay, no, no, no. Well, what do you want to do? What are my options? You could leave it to your spouse. You could leave it to your kids. You could leave it to a charity. You could leave it to strangers. You could use the Big Mattress Investment Program, which I don’t think that Al Smith, who was just on, would appreciate. The Big Mattress Investment Program is where you buy a big mattress, you stuff it with all of your money, and you just kind of leave it there now those who understand inflation would say that that’s going to be losing them value of that money and you know it’ll keep it safe in cash but it would lose its purchasing power simply because of the way that you know inflation works So the big mattress program may not be the best investment program, but people who, and then I’ll have people who want me to tell them who they should use as their representative. Who should we use? I’m like, well, let’s, I’m like, let’s, let’s talk about who you, who’s available. So do you have children? Yes. Okay, cool. Are any of your children capable of handling finances and interacting with the courts and doing things like that? Well, yes. Little Johnny can do that. Okay. Well, how about your other two kids? Well, Little Johnny’s better at that. Well, then we think we’ve answered our own question. We can use Little Johnny. So… A lot of times when I’m talking to people, they probably have an idea or know who these people would be or who they want to leave stuff to. Most people know who they want to leave stuff to. Most people know who they want to leave in charge. They just may not be able to spit that answer out when I say, well, hey, who do you want to leave in charge? Well, I don’t know. And then we get into the discussion of not wanting to leave anybody out. And I can understand that. We don’t want to leave people out. We don’t want to make people feel slighted. But at the same time, we don’t need to have everybody involved. There’s the old adage that too many cooks spoil the broth. So if there’s five children in a family, we’re like, well, we’re going to put all five in charge of carrying out an estate plan. Like, well, do all five of your kids get along all the time? Well, no, sometimes they fight. Okay. Do we need them to fight over your estate plan? Well, no, but they would be able to figure it out. I’m like, would they though? If your kids fight now when you’re here and then they’re fighting over your money or whose favorite things they get, it’s hard to predict that they will fight. It’s hard to predict they won’t fight. But we might want to make it as simple as possible. And if we’re splitting things up five ways between five kids, we can say, hey, each kid gets 20%. Easy enough. Or one-fifth, depending on how we feel like we should write the estate plan. and whether we use fractions or percentages. Some people like fractions more than percentages. Some people like percentages more than fractions. I think it might come down to how you felt about doing fractions or percentages when you were in elementary school and first learning about them. Some people had some difficulties with the way that fractions or percentages were taught, and you might have some leftover concerns about that. And it’s like, okay, well, then we’ll use whichever one you’re more comfortable with. Think of the movie Stand and Deliver, where in one of the scenes, the teacher brings in an apple and he’s got a cutting board and he cuts the apple in half. And so knife into a public school might not go as well right now in the current environment. But from when the movie was produced, it is an impactful scene. He chops the apple. apple in half and all the kids kind of jump back and he’s like all right how many do i have a half so half an apple it’s two halves what if i cut it cut this half in half what do i have and you know a lot i’m kind of like one of the as soon as like a quarter yes a half of a half it’s a quarter so he’s teaching him about fractions by chopping up an apple which is fair you know At least he’s chopping up an apple instead of like a blueberry or a grape or something. A blueberry or grape would be just far more difficult to chop into different places. And, you know, I don’t recall if at the end they ate the apple or not, but still. You know, we got, so we can easily write, you know, we put down who gets what. And then the person who’s in charge is your representative. That’s who’s responsible for carrying out the plans. Now they’re responsible to say, okay, I’m going to get 20% to each of the kids. All right. That’s easy enough. Or, you know, so you divide by five or multiply by 20%, whichever one you want to do. And you go, okay, we’ve got this. We’re good. But there needs to be somebody who carries out that plan, somebody who takes a will to the probate court, somebody who goes to the bank or the other financial institution to claim the funds and to send them where they’re supposed to go. These are the things that the personal representative needs to do, and you want somebody who can handle that, somebody who is – afraid of banks and, you know, thinks that we live in the wild, wild west. So if they go into a bank, there might be a robber like Jesse James or Wild Bill Hickok who will come in and, you know, hold up the bank when they’re there and take all their money, you know, and then they’ll probably escape on horses and jump on the stagecoach. So they can ride up to the iron horse when the horse could run as fast as a train. So they could catch a train and then escape that way. Although that’s kind of what happens in old Western movies. It’s not necessarily how it would happen now. And I don’t know about you, Luke, but I’ve never been to a bank where there is somebody on a horse outside of that bank. Have you? No. No, he’s shaking his head. No, I have never. You’ve never seen a horse parked in a parking spot or tied up to a hitching post outside of a bank? Outside of a bank? No. No. I’ve seen them in like fairgrounds. Right, that’s different though. Not a bank. Not a lot of horses, banks. Have you ever been into a bank? Like in general? Yes. Yes, I’ve been inside of a bank. Have you been involved in someone with their six-shooter coming in for a Wild West-style robbery? No. Yeah, it’s almost like it doesn’t happen like it does in the movies. No. Funny how that works. Yeah. But if you have somebody who’s afraid of that happening, you might not want to pick them to be going into a bank and trying to claim your assets. Yeah. Probably a bad call. It just makes sense. I mean, if you believe that the Westerns are documentaries about how life is now or how it was then, they might be a little bit fictionalized. But still, not the best person or someone who distrusts financial institutions and thinks that a giant company like Charles Schwab or Fidelity is going to steal their money or steal their soul or something like that. Probably not the best person to use. 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. Phone number to talk to me on the air is 303-477-5600. And once again, that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. Once again, 720-394-6887. So as we’re customizing things and we’re saying, okay, who do you want the assets to go to? Okay, we can do that. Who do you want to put in charge? For the most part, we can do that. You know, sometimes people will be like, oh, well, I am from Pakistan. I have an uncle in Pakistan who I want to do this. I say, well, it’d probably be best if we had someone who is based in the U.S. I don’t have anything against Pakistan, but Pakistan is a long way away. And if a bank needs you to come in and sign something, they might not be they might not have a branch in Pakistan. So, you know, just because we are U.S. citizens and U.S. or even if we’re not U.S. citizens, we live in the U.S., We’re trying to, you know, operate under Colorado and U.S. law. So somewhere like Pakistan may not be the most convenient location for that. And I don’t have anything against Pakistan. I just picked it because it sounded… It’s a cool word to say, Pakistan. And people tend to know where Pakistan is. It’s right next to India. But… And sometimes U.S.-Pakistan relationship is friendly. Sometimes it’s less friendly. U.S. and India tend to be more friendly and not be too angry with each other, just as a general rule. But that’s how, you know, Pakistan, especially, I mean, there was a time, I believe, when Pakistan was where there was some leader of an al-Qaeda organization who was saying that the U.S. captured him inside of Pakistan, right? And so there were questions about whether or not the Pakistani authorities knew that he was there and were properly harboring him intentionally or illegally and all those type of things. But for the most part, most people can say, okay, well, I want my mom or my dad or my brother or my sister or my kids to handle my estate. I’m like, cool, we can do that. And so we set that up and it’s fairly understandable to customize, fairly understandable that we want it to be your estate plan. But we still need to write the estate plan. So the will still has to have the essential elements of a will and still has to have the essential portions of a will and the language that the Supreme Court or the Colorado State Legislature likes to see should be in there. Now, that doesn’t mean that every single word that goes into every single estate plan is dictated by the state legislature or the state of Colorado. But there are lots of things that go into there that should be there. So I’ve run into this recently with like powers of attorney and people like, oh, well, my brother’s power of attorney doesn’t have the agent signing. So I don’t think we need to do that. I’m like, well, we probably ought to. Or my brother’s power of attorney isn’t notarized and that’s not required by Colorado law. So why are we doing that? And I say, well, because something that’s required by law isn’t necessary. Just because it’s not required by law doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea or it doesn’t function in the practical realm. So a power of attorney that is notarized is presumed to be valid presumed to be correct and will should be accepted by banks and other financial institutions and all those type of things there are many banks and financial institutions and even some medical institutions that will not accept a power of attorney that has not been notarized even though the law does not require it so you know the law kind of hints at it and strongly encourages it should happen, but it doesn’t necessarily say, no, if your power of attorney is not signed and notarized, then it cannot be valid. I’m like, well, yeah, it can, but that doesn’t mean that everybody’s going to accept it as readily and as easily as if it is notarized. So, you know, kind of best practices and the practical aspect of how things work. Getting a power of attorney notarized is just a good idea. And having your agents sign and date to say that they understand that they’ve been named as the agent and they understand that if they were to act, they would be required to act in the best interest of the individual. and to act in a correct manner and as a properly functioning fiduciary and not steal people’s money and things like that, that’s what they’re signing. Now, I mean, signing to say, yes, I understand I’m named here and that if I act, I’ll do it the proper way isn’t binding them to say, oh, hey, well, you signed here that said you would act on this person’s behalf. Now you have to. We’re not super keen on forcing people to do stuff. which is also a part of why when you pick somebody to act as your agent, you want somebody who would be willing to do it and not somebody who you’re going to be forcing to do it. You know, if, uh, the agent that I have set up for my power of attorney is my wife’s brother and he is willing to do it. And we’re set up to do everything for them in case their kids were to die before. our um before our um before they’re old enough to handle things and be adults so you know we we have reciprocal you know we’ll take care of theirs they’ll take care of ours you know type of thing you know i would want to take my some random person that i knew in like elementary junior high school and be like oh I’m going to name that person because I always thought they were really cool. Or, yeah, my situation is going to be super complicated. So I’m going to dump it on my enemy who I, you know, who was my nemesis in second grade soccer or something like that. You know, that’s just not what we’re trying to do. We’re not forcing people to do things. But those things, they may not be absolutely necessary, but they’re just a good idea to do. And so many times the practical aspect of how do things work is part of why we do things, even if it’s not 100% spelled out every single thing in a document or everything in law. Sometimes I’ll have people be like, oh, well, you know, you say here, you reference the, um, you know, uniform, uniform, uniform transfer to minors act. You know, how come you didn’t just include that in the document? I’m like, because the uniform transfer to minors act is about eight pages long. And I didn’t feel the need to quote all eight pages of it in your document that, so that there’s, you know, just, Oh, look, here’s all the statutes. If someone wants to see it, they can go look it up or the, uh, So if I’m referencing the Fiduciary Powers Act, I’m not going to copy and paste the entire Fiduciary Powers Act. into a will or a trust when it’s readily available for people to go look up and see what the statute itself says if they want to. But part of the point of an estate plan is you can reference other things, but you don’t have to have everything all written all in one spot. I mean, if we did, then estate plans would be several hundred or, in cases of a trust, several thousand pages long. And that, to me, seems excessive. So we’re trying to find a balance between being efficient and putting what needs to be in there and also make sure that it’s customized to you, works for you, but has the essential elements that are required by law and required by kind of best practices and practicality of what’s the best thing to put into your estate plan. So you are listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on 560 KLZ AM, also heard on 100.7 FM or the KLZ 560 radio app. Phone number to talk to me on the air is 477-5600. And once again, that’s 477-5600. And my direct line is 394-6887. And again, that’s 394-6887. So we’re figuring out who should be your, who’s going to get your assets, who’s going to be in charge, you know, who do we want to leave in charge of things, what are the essential elements of things. And I’ve also had people be like, oh, well, you know, we need to delete this portion of this portion of this portion of this power of attorney because it doesn’t apply to me. And I’m like, well, let’s talk about that for a minute, just because everything looks like it, or you think it doesn’t apply to you right now. It doesn’t mean it may not in the future and doesn’t mean that it’s not a good idea to leave it there. So some of the examples of this. is the standard language that the Supreme Court and the state of Colorado want us to have says that your power of attorney, your agent of your power of attorney can support you, support your spouse, support your children, or anybody else who is legally entitled to your support. And people will be like, well, you know, I don’t have anybody that fits that bill. I’m not married. I don’t have any children, and nobody else is legally entitled to my support, so we should just remove that. And I say, okay, cool. That sounds great. So you’re getting married in about three months. So might it be an okay idea to say in there that if you were supporting your spouse, we could just leave it in there, knowing full well that you’re not married right this second, but you will be in the future, or it’s possible you could be in the future. And I’m not saying that if you don’t have children and you’re in your 60s or 70s, you’re probably not going to have any children. Got that. But somebody legally entitled to your support. Well, what if you are in your early 60s and you promise your grandchildren that you’ll start paying for their college? and so you do that for two years and then you die and then the grandchild goes well wait a minute how am i supposed to keep or let’s say maybe you don’t die but you go into a memory care facility and your agent and the agent says oh well you know i according to this power of attorney i don’t have the ability to keep paying for your tuition so i’m sorry that uh Your grandpa and grandma have Alzheimer’s slash dementia, but since they do, we can’t use this money to pay for your college anymore. Well, that might not be the outcome you were looking for because you were trying to help take care of your. child’s education and so you or your grandchild’s education so you would want that to keep going on and keep happening not just disappear if you were to become mentally incapacitated or unable to make your own decisions so and you know sometimes people will be like oh well you know This says spouse. It shouldn’t say spouse. We don’t have anything to do with a spouse. I’m like, oh, that’s the definition of something that says that if you have an annuity that’s for you and a joint and survivor annuity with your spouse, then you can do this, that, or whatever. And, you know, it’s just the definition of things. It’s not necessarily saying you have a spouse or you need to have a spouse. And, you know, by the word spouse appearing in a state planning document doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re always going to have or that somebody is going to think that you have a spouse. It’s just kind of there. It’s a definition. I mean, sometimes people get concerned about definitions like, well, you know, why is this here? I’m like, because it’s a definition of what that means. Oh, well, you know, we don’t want to do that. We just want to delete the definition. I’m like, okay, we can delete the definition. It’s just kind of. Standard language that goes in there to have all the terms, you know, but Sometimes I don’t know I I think sometimes we were you know brought up in school and be like Oh never include any information that wouldn’t be completely relevant in the papers that you write or you know Don’t but part of an estate plan is it’s effective now, but it’s also anticipating potential future situations I’ve had people who were telling me about how they don’t want to have the ability for an agent to change any sort of investments, but they need to keep everything exactly the same. I’m like, yes, but do they need to be able to deal with the investments you have? Well, sure. But, you know, we don’t have any margin loans. We don’t have any calls. We don’t have any loans against things like this. I’m like, OK, so where are you invested in? Well, you know, everything’s in Vanguard and it’s all in mutual funds. And I’m like, I can guarantee you that inside that mutual fund, there’s some sort of margin loan and there’s some sort of. you know, the thing that’s going on that you, you know, that the financial folks do what they do. But if you don’t have that in there, you’re then tying their hands and you’re restricting their ability to go through and handle your finances and accomplish what you want. So there’s lots of things that happen like that. It’s kind of like, you know, so my wife is a reverse mortgage loan officer. And the first company that she worked for, they like within a week or two, their interest rates went up. They had a whole bunch of loans that they had to get back. And suddenly they owed something like $3 billion. And they’re like, yeah, we don’t keep $3 billion in reserve and cash on hand. So they had to close down and the loans got sold off to other loan servicing companies and things like that. Well, the people who got the loans, it didn’t really affect them. But once they got the loan, then the loan got packaged into a securities transaction and it got sold off to investors who then sold it to a different investor. And the whole backside of loans and what gets sold where, and you may have gotten a loan from your local bank, whether it was Wells Fargo or First National or First Bank of Colorado or wherever it was, they don’t necessarily hold onto all of those loans forever and ever. They sell them off to other servicers. They sell them off to other investors that hold on to those loans, because as those loans, as people pay their payments, then there’s principal, there’s interest, and so it all gets paid. And so all of the backside stuff and all of the investment side of stuff isn’t really what somebody who’s getting a reverse mortgage or even a mortgage is concerned about. I have a mortgage on my house. I’m like, hey, I just wanted to have enough money that I could pay my house, and then I’ll pay the money back over time. It’ll be great. but what happened to that loan, and suddenly I’m not paying First Bank, but I’m paying First Mortgage Servicing Company. Okay, well, are they related? Are they the same? I don’t know. It didn’t really make a big difference to me in getting the loan and being able to pay for my house, but all those things that are buried in the backside of financial institutions and things like that Those are all the type of things that your agent needs to be able to deal with. So what looks like it might not be fully relevant to you does need to be there so that they can deal with the financial things that you have. So your estate plan is yours. We set it up to work for you now and for what might come up in the future. And we want to customize it for you so that your estate plan does what you want it to do. Thanks so much for listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey. My phone number again, 720-394-6887. And that’s 720-394-6887. Stay tuned for John Rush and Rush Reason next. Thanks and bye.
SPEAKER 05 :
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.
SPEAKER 06 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ Management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
SPEAKER 04 :
Rush to Reason with John Rush is coming up next on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 02 :
John Rusher on the next Rush to Reason. It’s Health and Wellness Wednesday. Lisa Paglia, author of the book Truth, Lies, and Alzheimer’s. It’s Secret Faces is a vital guide for families navigating the complexities of Alzheimer’s and dementia. Amon Blair is a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Lives in Austin, Texas. He’ll give us an update on the flooding this past weekend that happened in Texas. That’s the next Rush to Reason. Weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m. Brought to you by one of our great sponsors, Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning. Find them at klzradio.com or download our free app, KLZ Radio.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, it’s that time of year again where we’re all getting prepared for the upcoming hunting season. Hi, this is Scott Whatley with Sportsman of Colorado. Tune in each week and we’ll bring you local experts in archery, muzzle loading, and rifle hunting. Looking for a place to hunt? We’ve got you covered. Want to book a trophy deer or elk hunt with a reliable outfitter? We can help. For the anglers, we’ll give you a fishing report each week. If you like the outdoors, you’ll love Sportsman of Colorado, Saturdays at 1 p.m. right here on KLZ 560. Your home, the safety zone, a place where you rest, invest, gather, grow, watch, and work.
