Estate planning isn’t just about financial security; it’s about peace of mind. In this episode, Michael Bailey discusses the numerous considerations and steps involved in creating a personalized estate plan. Using relatable personal stories, Michael explains the intricacies of choosing guardianship for children, the importance of life insurance, and how to responsibly plan for unforeseen circumstances. The episode challenges listeners to consider the questions: Who will take care of my children? How will they be provided for? This conversation is a must-listen for anyone contemplating their estate planning needs.
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 :
All right, good afternoon. Welcome to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey. So we can do something besides just leave your family alone. You are listening to KLZ 560 AM or 100.7 FM. 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. So I feel like I talk a lot about very similar topics when I talk about estate planning. I talk about why you need to do it and why it’s so important, how we personalize and customize it. And I feel like I keep, sometimes I feel like I keep banging that same drum of, hey, we need to do this. Yes, we need to do this. Why do you need to do this? And I’ve read, so I’m, this is because I am an estate planning attorney and I end up in various discussion groups with other estate planning attorneys and you know, online, you know, whether it’s people I’m connected to via LinkedIn or people I’m connected to via Facebook or other social media platforms, sometimes people will talk about and we all kind of have variations on the same theme of why you want to do your estate plan. And I was reading somebody’s post the other day where they talked about how something like 73 to 75 to 77% of Americans think that it’s important to have a plan in place for death, and it’s a good thing to do. And yet, the numbers of how many actually have one in place is between 12% and 31%, depending on which study you believe. So obviously, there’s some sort of disconnect between people who say, yes, we need to have that planned, and people who actually go ahead and do it. So a lot of what I talk about in doing an estate plan is trying to be like, hey, we actually need to get this done. We don’t need to put it off. And I think there’s lots of reasons that people put it off. One, I think the biggest reason is that everybody believes that they’re going to die. Everybody knows it’s going to happen. It’s inevitable. It is the end of life. Very, very few people think it’s going to happen anytime soon. I have run into clients who have been diagnosed with cancer for a long time and they’ve been given weeks or months or days left to live. And I’m like, okay, they probably have a pretty good idea that it is going to happen soon. And they want to try to plan ahead. But most people, I mean, probably all of you out there listening, driving around, I would guess that something in the high 98, 99% of you don’t think that you’re going to die anytime soon. I would put myself in that category. I don’t have any plans to die anytime soon. I imagine, Charlie, you probably feel the same way. I’m getting a head nod from Mr. Charlie. He doesn’t think he’s going to die anytime soon. Very few of us do. And so because we don’t have any concerns about dying anytime soon, we tend to not worry too much about planning for our death. And we’re like, hey, well, we have time. We’ll get to that. Whether it’s, oh, well, I’ll do that after I retire or after I have grandkids or after I’m retired and have grandkids, but I now know it’s time to move out of my house because I can’t climb the stairs anymore. You know, these are, are those perfectly acceptable times to set up an estate plan? Well, yes, yes, they are. Are they the markers that you have to hit? No, no, they are not. And I like, you know, so my, some of my younger clients, you know, they’re in their early twenties and they’ve just had a baby and they’re like, okay, we want to do something. I’m like, cool. I’m like, I really hope I write this for you. And we don’t use it for the next 50, 60, 70 years. We just don’t want to have that be the thing. We don’t want to have that be a problem. We don’t want to have it be something where we have some sort of issues or problems going on. And so because of that, but they still plan ahead. I mean, I did my first estate plan right around when I had my first child. Because at that point, it kind of more occurred to me that life wasn’t completely about me. Now, I don’t think of myself as being a particularly selfish person. I grew up in church where we did service on a mostly regular basis, and I was always involved in service organizations and various things like that. But faced with the reality of, hey, now you have a child. Now she’s a 19-year-old sophomore in college. But when we first had her, she was this little tiny thing. I remember when she was born, she was born and she came out face up. And as she was coming out face up, kind of the skin of her face got caught. And so it kind of got pulled down. And she’d been, just the way that it was pulled, she looked a little bit like the gray ghost from Pac-Man. And I’m like, okay, so we just had a child that’s a gray ghost from Pac-Man. So as soon as she came out, the doctors took her over to another thing and did whatever they do and kind of get her breathing better on her own. Oddly enough, when you’ve never breathed on your own, it’s a… Not the most natural practice thing. So they got her going and then they brought her back. I’m like, okay. But I’m like, just because I hadn’t seen a whole lot of newborn babies, I didn’t quite know what to expect. But suddenly I had this little tiny thing that was born as a gray ghost from Pac-Man. And then they’d had a little suction things. Her head was a little bit cone. So I’m like, so I have a gray ghost from Pac-Man who looks like a cone head. I’m like, she’s perfectly fine now. It hasn’t been a, you know, she didn’t turn into a conehead because those are Saturday Night Live characters. But still, suddenly I was like, oh, okay. This little tiny, not completely helpless, but almost fully helpless creature, I’m now responsible for raising. And, you know, I have to, we have to feed her. We have to clothe her. We have to treat her well. you know we have to teach her how to function in the world which you know is for those who have older teenagers is still an ongoing process but you know suddenly i’m responsible for teaching this whole new person new to this world what i’m supposed to do and uh that was a daunting task to start with still seems somewhat daunting to me even though i have a 16 13 and 19 year old, I’m like, well, I’m still trying to figure it out. So you are listening to mobile estate planning with Michael Bailey here on five 60 KLZ AM also heard on 100.7 FM or the KLZ five 60 radio app. Phone number to talk to me on the air is 477-5600. And again, that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. And once again, 720-394-6887. So we’ve got this brand new child. And my wife tells me that the way that I drove to the hospital and the way I drove home from the hospital with the baby were completely different driving. I’m like, it’s very possible. If you’ve ever seen the movie Knocked Up when they’re driving home from the hospital and the guy’s driving like 20 miles an hour on the freeway and everybody’s behind him and honking and he’s like, they can do whatever they want. I’m not going over 20 in this thing. I mean, I think I’ve become more responsible as a driver, but that’s just one of those things. So that was almost immediate. I became more responsible as a driver. And it’s not like I was irresponsible before, but as a dad… most of the things that I do are trying to help my kids learn and grow and do what’s best for them. Whether it’s picking a college for my oldest or teaching her how to drive a car or one of the One of the early experiences we had was when she was young, we took her trick or treating and she was dressed as a mouse. I think we dressed her as a Mickey Mouse. So she had some ears on and we were crossing the street and her ears fell off as we were crossing the street. So she started to run back out to get the ears and there was a car coming. And I remember I yelled at her, no, no, no, don’t do that, kiddo. And she was, you know, very, you know, me yelling her to stop was apparently upsetting to her. So she kind of got a little bit weepy. And I’m like, no, no, I’m not mad at you. I just don’t want you to get hit by a car. So we let the car go by, we went and got the ears, got her. And then fortunately there was more candy involved so she could focus on the candy and not the fact that dad was, I mean, I wasn’t mad at her, but you know, she heard the, you know, me being a little bit loud and it sounded like I was mad. And so, you know, I’m trying to teach her not to be, you know, that cars are not to be trifled with and you shouldn’t jump out in front of them. You know, this seems like a decent life lesson to learn. And, you know, and later on when she was 16 and she, you know, got her driver’s license and that night she went off to a dance at the church that we belong to. So there was, our church will put on youth dances sometimes. And so she was awesome. off to a church dance. And so my wife took a video of her driving away in the car. And about 15 minutes later, I got a call from her. And she said, Dad, I can’t get the car to start. I’m like, what do you mean you can’t get the car to start? She’s like, well, the keys are stuck in the ignition, and it won’t do anything, and I can’t get any. And so she couldn’t do anything. So I was like, okay, well, let me come over. I’ll see what I can do. So I jumped in the car, in my car, and I drove over to the church, which is about 10, 15 minutes away. And then when I got there, I kind of could see what she was talking about. For some reason, she’d tried to turn the wheel in a certain direction when everything was off. And one of the security features of the car was that if you try to turn the wheel when everything’s off, it’ll lock everything up and you can’t do anything. So… I, being the brilliant dad that I was, knew exactly how to solve this problem, and so I did. And by being the brilliant dad that I am, knowing exactly how to solve the problem, I mean I went and typed in to Google, how do you unstick a steering wheel for this year make and model of the car? and it came back oh this is a security device you have to do this and this and then if you turn the wheel in the same direction as it was turning and turn the key at the same time it’ll start the car and then you can you know reset everything and i’m like okay cool and fortunately for me it worked so you know i wasn’t the uh yeah i wasn’t the dad that knew everything about everything but i did know how to google how to do that and you know could save her so that she could have the car But, you know, somewhere, and now she’s off at college, and she called us this weekend. Apparently, her battery had died, so she had it recharged, and then something with the hood not latching properly, her car alarm was going off throughout the night, and she came down to her car with many notes of people who were trying to sleep and not so happy about this. She happened to sleep through it. So she was concerned about that and calling. And even as a 19-year-old, we’re still trying to teach her how to function in the world. As a 47-year-old, I’m still trying to learn how to function in the world and make my way through it. So one of the things, you know, so in trying to keep our kids safe from the world and life and everything, you know, I also, you know, I’m still in the midst of, you know, my, you know, paying for food and car and clothing and education. And, you know, since one of my middle daughters is a volleyball player, we pay for shoes and we pay for, you know, club sports and all those type of things. And my… The youngest is also, he’s gotten into playing club basketball. So, you know, there’s a financial component to it. So one of the things that you, I learned as a new father was, hey, you have to pay for all of this. Okay. Got it. Makes sense. You know, I’m not like upset or bitter about it. It’s just one of the things you do. You provide for your kids. That’s, you know, make sure that they’re fed and watered and clothed and sheltered and all of those type of things. Well, if I am not here, I’m not gonna be able to work. If I were to pass away, then my kids would, I couldn’t do my job as an estate planning attorney. I couldn’t do any job. So my wife and I looked into obtaining life insurance. And we were like, okay, well, we’ll go do the life insurance thing. And especially when we bought a house, we’re like, well, we need to have enough life insurance that’ll pay the house off. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you have a 30-year mortgage, and you also have a 30-year life insurance policy that you get when you’re young because they’re affordable when you’re in your 20s, and you can get a 30-year policy that’ll pay a million dollars. And you’re like, cool, well, that’ll be enough to pay off the house, and then my wife wouldn’t have to go straight back to work. So suddenly the importance of life insurance made sense to me. I didn’t worry about life insurance too much when I was a teenager or in college or even newly married. You’re like, hey, you know what? I’m a teenager. I’m a college student. I’m newly married. I’m young and I’m invincible. Why in the world would I have life insurance? except for when something drastic or terrible or very tragic happens and you need life insurance to cover the bills and take care of a spouse and kids. And so looking into life insurance. Life insurance is more Al Smith’s realm, which his show was right before mine. But with that life insurance, I said, well, okay, so if I die, then pay out to my wife and we’ll be good. What happens if my wife and I both die? What if we’re on a honeymoon vacation type of thing and we’re on an airplane that disappears from the sky like the Malaysia Airlines 370 flight did or one that goes down or any number of options? When I describe it to my clients, they usually say, well, if you’re on an airplane that is abducted by aliens and they put the airplane back in the sky but they forget to restart the engine so it plummets to the sky plummets to the earth and there are no survivors? Well, this is problematic. So if my wife and I are both gone, we run into the question of who will raise my kids and how will that money, and if we have life insurance or other money, how will that money be used and who will be in charge of it? And that’s the estate planning part of, okay, so who’s going to raise the kids? Who will be the guardian? Picking a guardian is an incredibly important thing. My wife and I have our ways that we think about raising kids and we have our approaches and we have our things that we try to do and how we try to teach our children to be good, productive members of society. And our approach to that is different from probably every other married couple on the planet. It’s mostly the same as how our parents would have done things. It’s mostly the same as how people who are of our faith would do things. It’s mostly the same as how people of our community would do things, where we live in a subdivision that most of us are in similar life situations, but it’s not exactly the same. And so picking a guardian of who would raise our kids If we were gone is a huge part of that estate plan and not something that I ever realized I would have to do until I had kids. It just didn’t occur to me. Not that I wasn’t paying attention to anything. It just was not on my radar screen. 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, 303-477-5600. And again, 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. Once again, 720-394-6887. So picking a guardian. Now, I have three siblings. I have an older sister and I have two younger brothers. And my wife has four siblings, so she has four younger brothers. So when we were looking at who would we want to pick as a guardian, we looked first at our parents and we’re like, yeah, but we don’t really want to have our moms and dads who are in the grandpa and grandma role. We didn’t want to have… Grandpa and grandma have to suddenly become mom and dad and the enforcers and all of those things. We didn’t want to take away our grandpa and grandma role from each of our moms and dads. And plus, my mom and dad, they’re aging just like all the rest of us are, and so are my in-laws. So we’re like, well, that’s probably not the direction we want to go. Instead, we looked to our siblings. We said, okay, well, if we’ve got seven different siblings, let’s look and see which of those siblings we would be most comfortable with. And, you know, one of my siblings has never married and has no children. And we love him to death, but we don’t think it’d be the greatest idea to drop here, have three kids, good luck, figure out how to raise them. One of my wife’s siblings, he’s a doctor and they’ve got four kids. Their three oldest are roughly the same ages as ours. And that would seem like it would be the most similar life situation. Except that we didn’t really want, we’ve tried very hard in our lives, because the kids are so similar in age, we’ve tried very hard not to have comparison between them and not to have competition between them. Our oldest children are both sophomores in college. Our middle children were actually due on the same day, and no, we did not plan that. But each of our oldest children have had different things that they excel at and different things that they’re they’re good at, and we’ve always celebrated each child’s accomplishments without needing to compare of, oh, well, this child did this, and this child did this, and that’s why they’re superior. We’ve very much tried to avoid that being the type of comparisons. And we thought maybe if they ended up in the same household, it would be inevitable that you’d have the comparisons, and we didn’t want to have that be what we were doing. So we we chose to have not them as our guardians. Now, my wife also has a her youngest brother is 14 years younger than she is. Her parents had four kids for a long time and then they had a caboose so to speak that was born eight years after their you know then youngest child and that child he was like 10 when we got married so when we started having kids a few years later he was 15 or 16. we thought maybe picking a 15 or a 16 year old to raise our children might not be the best idea Just because a 15-year-old, 16-year-old, and I have a 16-year-old now, and she’s wonderful and marvelous and remarkable and all of those things, but I wouldn’t want to burden her with raising a baby or raising young children or even raising her younger brother, the 13-year-old. Last night as we went to bed, he went to give her a hug, and apparently he was wearing some pajamas that were in need of being washed. And she was like, have you ever washed your pajamas? And it was kind of, you know, getting on him about it, which that’s what siblings are supposed to do. But I. As a 16-year-old, I’m like, okay, fine. So they went to bed. And this morning, I went and found the pajamas and put them in the washer with some towels so they could wash, and then we can dry them, and they’ll be all fresh and clean tonight so they can be worn. We’ll take advantage of our modern washers and dryers. where our water washers and dryers can work well. You know, they can wash the clothes while I’m not home and then throw them in the dryer and they can dry the clothes when I’m not around. You know, it’s wonderful. It’s not quite we have to take the the washing down to the river and pound on it with a rock and soap. I’ve done that when I’ve been on long camping trips, but I would prefer the wonderful washer and dryer that I have at home where I put stuff in, put it in soap, click the button that says run a wash cycle, and then I walk away for an hour or two and come back and it’s ready to be put in the dryer. It’s a wonderful use of modern technology. But all of these things led us to one of the siblings that we were okay with being a guardian. So we named the guardian in the estate plan. Because my children are young, too, and we’ve ended up with about $3 million of life insurance, if my wife and I both die, there’s about $3 million of life insurance that pays out. Well, that’s about a million dollars per kid. And what 19-, 16-, or 13-year-old wouldn’t love to have a million dollars? I think most would. But do I really want my 13-year-old to have access to a million dollars? No, not really. Do I want my 16-year-old to have access to a million dollars? No, not really. Do I want my 19-year-old? Well, the 19-year-old is a saver, and she’s pretty good with finances, so I’d probably be okay with it. But in any case, a million dollars per kid – If I’d had a million dollars at age 13 or 16 or 19, I might have made different choices than I do now. And I might not have been super wise with a million dollars. And maybe by the time I was 25 and going off to law school, I’m like, hey, if I get a million dollars, then I should buy a house and not have to. live in an apartment, all those type of things. But we set up our estate plan so that, in our case, the same people who are raising our kids will also have access to that $3 million, a million dollars per kid, to use to help pay for their life and to raise them. Because that way, once we And there will be money to help pay for things. Because if we had three, now we’ve only got two that would still need to be raised, but the other one’s still in college, so need to be paid for. But when they were young kids, and I’m like, oh, hey, hey, Hugh, family, you have your own four kids. Here’s, you have your own four kids. Here’s three more kids. Good luck, figure it out. Well, no, we’re like, okay, here’s three kids. Here’s $3 million to help raise them. You know, please use that money wisely, use it to take care of them and use your good adult judgment that you have so that you can take care of those kids and raise them. And the terms of using that money is that it’s supposed to be used for their health, education, support, and maintenance. It’s supposed to be used to raise them. You’re not supposed to just take it and use it for yourself. You know, if you need to take them on vacation, you can use the money for vacation. But you don’t need to buy yourself a really fancy sports car or unnecessarily luxurious furniture and things like that. If you suddenly have seven kids to raise as opposed to four, you might need to find a bigger house that can hold everybody. And that’s perfectly fine, too. But we didn’t want to burden the people who were raising our kids with saying, oh, sorry, you know, I guess you’ve got more kids. Figure it out. That’s not what we were trying to do. Rather, we were trying to make sure that our kids are taken care of, make sure that, you know, even in our absence, they’re raised properly and the money is there to take care of them. So with that, we set up an estate plan. So there’s various moments in life that spur us to do things. One of mine was when my first child was born. Other people might have different moments. But as we work on doing so, we can get our kids so we can have an estate plan to take care of them. So thanks so much for listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey. My direct line again, 720-394-6887. I will be back next week, but stay tuned for John Rush and Rush to Reason, and we’ll see you next week. Thanks and bye.
SPEAKER 02 :
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.
