In this episode of Mobile Estate Planning, Michael Bailey delves into the critical aspects of ensuring your estate is properly managed and protected for the future. Through engaging anecdotes and expert advice, Michael highlights the importance of a sound estate plan and the peace of mind it can offer you and your loved ones. From discussing the aftermath of neglected planning to the specifics of trusts and wills, Michael’s insights make complex legal processes accessible and actionable.
00:00:07 Introduction and Background of 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 :
All right, good afternoon. Welcome 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 303-477-5600. And again, that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. And once again, 720-394-6887. So if we’re, you know, we’re here to talk about estate planning. So as the song says to leave, you know, leave, do something besides leave your family just alone. Just because we want to, you know, We don’t want to leave your family a mess. And I’ve actually had a couple of people this last week who came to meet with me because they were left with a mess and they would not want to leave the rest of their family with a mess. One, he came to visit me. He said, well, you know, my mom died about two years ago and it was unexpected. And she didn’t have anything in place. And so we’re just now figuring out what it is that we want to do. There’s now kind of coming to the end of two years of figuring out who gets what and who they can put, who’s going to actually get the assets and getting them all distributed out. So it took a couple of years to go through all of the… necessary steps and work their way through all of the different computations and permutations of who was supposed to get what and all of those type of things. And he was just saying that he really wanted to avoid that, you know, so that when he died, he wanted to pass things on to his kids without them needing to go through all of the court process and all of the trying to figure out and decipher what the default rules were. and all of that. And I sat there and I agreed with him. I said, Yep, that’s a really good idea. Let’s talk about what you want to do and let’s figure out what you want to do. And then we can from there, we can say, OK, this is what you want to do. How can we make that happen? Because most of the things that people want to do, we can make happen. Not always. There’s a few exceptions. And sometimes people will come to me and they’ll want to do things one way, which I think is a little bit… I think everybody comes to estate planning from the background that they have. And so they’re certainly trying to figure everything out in a way that makes sense to them. So… People who I meet who are engineers, they tend to want to be very detail oriented. They want to have all of the, you know, everything laid out and all of the benefits and cost benefit analysis and, you know, pros and cons and everything all laid out for them. And then they can, you know, go through and pick and choose which pros and cons they like and tell me, hey, this is what we want. Well, sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t. I have some people who come to me who have clearly been in management type of positions. And so they’re pretty sure they’re in charge of everything, including the meeting that we’re having. And so… You know, I spent a lot of time listening to them and trying to kind of guide them in the correct direction. But sometimes every once in a while, there’s a person who’s pretty sure that they know more than me. And I’m like, okay, cool. Then if you know all of that, go for it. By all means. But I need you to tell me how to do things. I’m like, yeah. So there’s a little bit of a dichotomy there. Some people come to me like, oh, I don’t know anything about this, so just tell me what I need to know and what I need to do. And so if I start to do that, they’re like, well, no, because of this, this, this, and this, and I think this, and I’m like, okay. So when you said you don’t know anything about it, and you need me to tell you what to do, apparently what you meant was, I hope that you tell me the right things that I will like or understand, and then we can do that. So every once in a while, someone will call and will ask me a question. And they’ll be like, oh, well, what are the rules on this? And so I’ll explain them to them. They’ll be like, oh, well, I like what you’re saying. I’m like, well, if you didn’t like what I was saying, I’ve not elected anything. There’s not a whole lot I can do differently. But I did have somebody the other day who, They were somewhat miffed at me that I had not. And I think this was an engineer type of discussion. They’re like, well, you know, you asked us questions, you asked us what we wanted to do. And then, you know, we’ve got this document. It’s a great document. But, you know, we need your advice on, you know, the pros and cons of everything we’re doing. So, you know, if we could just go through this entire document. And then you can tell us the pros and cons of everything. I’m like, I’m not trying to not answer your question. I want to answer your questions. But going through a 25-page long trust document line by line and explaining the pros and cons of every single line, every single decision… It’s going to take probably somewhere between 20 and 30 hours. So between 20 and 30 hours, if we do that, and I charge $200 an hour for the hourly work that I do, and I do very little hourly work, but if we go, it takes 20 hours times $200 an hour. that’s going to be an extra $4,000. If it takes 30 hours, it’s going to be an extra $6,000. So my fees to write the trust were about half of that. So if you’d like to triple or quadruple the price, I would be more than happy to go through absolutely everything with you. and people say well no we don’t want to have to pay for it we just need to understand it it’s like well okay that’s where we’ve i’ve talked previously about the levels of understanding of someone who understands um things on here’s what you need to know to understand what you’re doing with your estate plan level and then there’s the you know there’s a level of someone who’s done some research on the internet and so they know the names of different things And then there’s the level of the person who puts together the estate plan, someone like me, where I have my law degree and 20 years of experience in practicing law and all of those things. And then there’s a level of experience of the people who drafted the laws. And I would like to think that the people who drafted the laws have all sorts of experience in these type of things. But I do remember years ago here in Colorado, we had Senator Wayne Allard. as his commercials told us, was a veterinarian, not a lawyer, not a career politician. And, you know, the thrust of the ads was that you wanted to have somebody who was not a career politician and not a lawyer, but like, you know, a citizen just like us who could you know, govern and make policy for people who are just like us. And given that I’m not a veterinarian, I wasn’t sure that it was exactly just like us, but I mean, I do appreciate veterinarians and I’ll tell you a story of why just this weekend, I really appreciated veterinarians in a minute, but But a veterinarian’s probably not going to view estate planning the same way that I, as an estate planning attorney and 20 years of experience, would view things like that. I also would not view… how to do veterinarian work the same way that a veterinarian would. Since I’m an estate planning attorney, we do different things. But just because we do different things, we view things differently, but we’re all working towards the same common goal. That’s the same thing that we’re doing when we’re working towards the same common goal as an estate planning attorney. 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 303-477-5600. And again, that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. Once again, 720-394-6887. So a couple of weeks ago, our little, almost seven year old West Highland terrier was out in the backyard patrolling and woofing and doing things that she does in the backyard. She has to keep it safe from all of the squirrels and the mice. And, um, sometimes we’ve had seen her woofing it, you know, like spiders that are running around or, you know, we’re pretty sure there might’ve been a garter stake or two, or sometimes. Based on the smell, there might have been a skunk. So she’s out there doing her job of keeping us safe and protected. And she came in a couple weeks ago and she had a little like round spot on her kind of stomach, abdomen, chest area. And it was kind of, it was, you know, scraped and bleeding. And we think maybe she might have been woofing in, you know, in a bush or something and stabbed herself with a stick and had to, you know, cut herself. That was kind of sad. We’re like, oh, that’s very sad for the puppy. And so, you know, we’ve been watching her wound. Is it healed? And on Saturday I was taking a shower and my wife said, Hey, Michael. Yeah. So the little spot on Harper’s Harper’s my dog on Harper’s belly is it’s kind of hard and it looks like it’s oozing green stuff. Do you suppose we ought to take her to the vet? And I said, why? Yes. Yes, we should. because if it had just been a scrape and there was a scab or something, then that would be great. But if it’s oozing green stuff, I’m not a doctor, I’m not a veterinarian, but I know that oozing green stuff probably means some sort of infection because my dog is not a Vulcan and does not have green blood. My dog is in fact a dog and bleeds red blood, or at least it’s red when it’s exposed to oxygen, like most blood is. So we thought it would be a good idea to go over to the veterinarian. So we, you know, I finished my shower, got dressed. We went over to the vet and they said, okay. So they took all of her vital signs and all of those things. They’re like, okay, well, she seems pretty stable. We’ve got a, you know, hour and a half wait. So we’ll send you home and we’ll text you when we’re ready for you to come back. We’re like, okay, cool. So we went home. We had earlier that day dropped off my wife’s car to get the brakes fixed because her brakes had worn out. And so an hour and a half was right about the exact same time the brakes were supposed to be fixed and that we could take the dog back. So we’re like, ooh, we’re kind of hitting our… kind of in a race here of who’s going to get things done first. And as it turned out, when the brakes on the car were done, we drove over and we picked up the car from the brakes place and we paid them and then we brought the car home. And when we got home, my wife called the vet to see how things were going because the hour and a half was now two hours. And I said, well, it’d be about another 30 to 45 minutes and then you can bring her in. We’re like, okay, cool. So brakes got finished first, but of course we dropped the car off to start on the brakes at like 9am and didn’t get the car till 3am. We took the dog into the vet about 1pm. So, you know, it was like 4.15 by the time we got back to the vet. And so we took her, took the dog into the vet. Then, you know, at first, at first she was a little bit, not so excited. She was, you know, kind of whimpering a little bit. So I took her out and she had to go potty. So we took her out to the grass and she went potty and then brought her back in. And then she was super excited to be the vet. Cause she could jump up on the furniture and cause she’d look out the windows and, you know, all excited and smell the smells of the other dogs. I guess we haven’t taken her to the vet often enough that she’s afraid of it. you know and you know this particular vet visit there were no shots or anything so it was worked out great but so we took her in and the the vet tech comes in and looks and you know says okay well you know show me what’s going on we showed him he’s like she’s like okay so she looks at it she’s like oh okay i think i know what’s i think i know what’s going on here i’m like oh yeah what’s that like well i think your dog has a butt fly and i said well what’s a butt fly well Well, a bot fly is apparently a type of fly that they lay their eggs in rabbit feces. So we’ve had some rabbit. That’s one of the things that my dog has to defend against his rabbits in the backyard because we have out in the front yard, you know, like during the winter, the rabbits will come and nest and they kind of kill, you know, circular portions of the grass. And, you know, there’s some rabbits in the backyard. So when the larvae hatch, they are looking for a host. And, you know, my dog being out, being vigilant and ferocious and, um, you know, defending our backyard was probably where some rabbits had been. And so she had a larva that crawled up into her open wound and began to grow there. And so, cause she’s like looking at the, she’s looking at the little raised thing and she’s like, yeah, and it could see a little bit of movement. So we think it’s a bot fly. So she thinks there’s a bot fly larva. And we’re like, okay, cool. But she told us, she’s like, oh, you’ve got a bot fly. We can take care of that. And I’m like, almost like it was like no big deal. And I’m like, all right, cool. So they took my little dog and they took her in the back to the procedure room. And the little dog was gone for about 10 minutes. And then the vet tech comes back with the dog and a little vial test tube thing that had some clear liquid in it. I think probably was water. and a little, and a larva thing. And the larva thing was about maybe half an inch long. And you know, so it was in there and it was still alive and moving around. They’re like, oh, here, do you want to see it? And they handed it to me and I’m like, no, I don’t want to have a bot fly larva that I’m holding onto. And then she’s like, okay, well the vet will be in just a minute. She walks away and I’m like, we’re sitting there with his bot fly larva going, well, we’re glad that thing is out of you, little dog. We wanted just our little dog, not a little dog that was growing a bot fly larvae. And, you know, so once she said bot fly larvae, we could Google what a bot fly larva looked like. And you were like, oh yeah, okay. That makes sense. You can see that it was, you know, there was a picture of one that was on a squirrel and it was much larger than the one that our dog had had. So we’re like, well, cool. We’re glad that we could have that removed. you know, sooner rather than later. So the vet came in to talk to us, the actual doctor of veterinary medicine. And he comes in, he says, so that was like super satisfying. I’m like, Oh yeah, why is that? He’s like, Oh, it’s just so cool. You put, they put some like, um, some sort of like Vaseline jelly over the top so that the larva can’t breathe. And so it starts to poke its poke out so that it can, you know, poke through the jelly so it can breathe. And so I guess, I guess they catch it with like some sort of, you know, properly proper tweezers and just kind of pull it out. And yeah, it was, he thought it was, he was like, he said it was like just super satisfying. He was so pleased that it went well and So we talked to the vet for like five minutes and then he went off and we took our dog and we paid for the procedure and thought it was the best money that we could have spent that Saturday because our dog no longer has a larva growing in it. And you know, that’s, you know, that’s a wonderful, great thing. You know, I, I mean, lots of things I know about dogs. I know how to feed them properly. I know how to take them out on walks and keep them healthy and happy. You know, all of these things that I can do with dogs are great, but But, I mean, I suppose I could have tried to do a similar thing. It’s like, you know, kind of when you’re thinking back to my Boy Scout days, and it’s like, oh, if you have a tick, you pour some cooking oil on it, and then it’ll back out so that it needs to breathe too, and then you can pull the tick off, but you don’t want to just pull on the tick or rip a head off or anything. You’ll leave part of the tick inside of your skin, and then it’ll get infected. So these are all the things that I learned about how to deal with bugs and things like that as a Boy Scout. But I’m like, but I don’t want to do that on my dog. I wouldn’t want to have tried. Because knowing my luck, I would have tried to pull the bot fly larva out and it would have like ripped in half or something. And then I would have had half a bot fly larva inside of my dog, which I’m sure would have gotten infected and been much worse. So I had a vet who would do things right, who would take care of my dog. And I was very happy to go meet with the vet and have them. I was glad that that was the outcome because, you know, we just thought it was a little bit infected and, you know, needed some antibiotics. Well, we still got the antibiotics because once you pull a bot fly larva out, there’s still a wound that needs to heal and we don’t want it to get infected and, you know, and the dog. So, you know, this was my, you know, adventure on Saturday with my puppy dog, a veterinarian and a bot fly larva. And so, yeah, there’s just, you know, I may know about how to keep dogs healthy and happy and take them on walks or, you know, when they can come and, you know, if I sit down to watch a basketball game or a football game, they’re certainly right there on the couch wanting to be pet. So you can keep them happy by scratching their tummies or behind their ears or, you know, wherever they, the dog is or petting them. But, you know, that’s exactly why I needed a veterinarian to be able to handle that and to be able to do those type of things so that the veterinarian could be super satisfied. And my wife and I were talking about, well, why do you think he would say he was just super satisfying? And I think part of it was that it was a community animal hospital that we’d gone to. And so there were probably many animals who had come in during the day that had much worse problems or not easily fixable problems than my dog did. So my dog had an easily fixable problem where they could fix it. Send us home with our dog to be happy and healthy and be thrilled with, you know, having gone to the vet so that the dog could be taken care of. And I totally get that. That is a wonderful thing. It’s an amazing thing. It’s a great thing. And I’m glad that there are veterinarians in the world who can do things like that. But you are not listening to a veterinarian show. You are listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on 560 KLZ AM or 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. So the veterinarian I needed to bring into my dog so that they would first recognize that what it was, was a bot fly and not just an infected spot. And there wasn’t anything green about the bot fly. It was kind of white, had a little bit of red in it, maybe a little bit of Brown, but so whatever my wife thought she saw. wasn’t necessarily green but when she saw something on the abdomen of my dog we’re like okay we got it we got to do something different anyway green being the color was unimportant it was okay how can we do something to help fix the dog because we don’t want the dog to be in a distressed situation or have a parasite that could cause more havoc for the dog So, you know, going to the veterinarian who had the experience and the understanding necessary to look and say, oh, yes, that’s a bot fly. We can take care of that. You know, so when people come to me and say, oh, I need to do an estate plan, I say, cool, let’s talk about that. Some cases are very easy. Oh, well, we just want to set up a will so that if I die, it goes to my spouse. If it goes to my spouse, then it goes to my two kids. Cool. But we recognize that, we understand that, and we can take care of that. Now, sometimes people come to me, they’re like, oh, well, I don’t know if I need a will or a trust. Well, let’s talk about that, shall we? They’re like, well, what’s the dollar amount? Well, there’s not really a dollar amount. And the question about the dollar amount kind of comes from when we used to have much lower estate tax limits. The current estate tax limit is $13.99 million per person. That goes up to $15 million per person in 2026, so starting next year. But the estate tax limit used to be like $1 million per person. Now, $1 million per person 20 years ago was a pretty large number. $1 million per person now, given how housing prices are in Colorado, really isn’t as much as it seems. My parents, they paid $104,000 for their house when I was six years old. Now that same house is probably worth $700,000, $750,000, or $800,000. Not that they’ve repainted it, they’ve redone the carpet, they’ve finished the basement. So they’ve done some things like that. But a lot of the things that were done, but mostly they’ve just been there and housing has become more expensive. So if you’ve got somebody like my parents who have a, I guess we’ll put it at 700, just as a guess. I don’t know if this is anywhere to actually being correct. It’s a $750,000 house. Okay. They’ve got a $750,000 house. Cool. Well, my dad has worked hard all of his life. He retired a couple of years ago. He’s got his 401k now to turn into an IRA that he worked at and saved, you know, like $1.2 million over the course of his life. you know, 35, almost 40 year career. And so now we’ve got $1.2 million plus $750,000. We got $1.95 million. Wow. Well, that’s suddenly a million dollars doesn’t sound like a whole lot, does it? So it used to be that the estate tax limits were tied just to the individual. And if they were tied just to the individual, then you could only have a million dollars in assets on your own. And you couldn’t have a million dollars in assets if you had above that. then you would be taxed on it. So for someone who had $1.95 million, you would take not quite a million dollars of assets and put it in a trust for one spouse and put a million dollars in a trust for the other spouse. Or if you had amounts that went above that, then you could split it up into half and half. So that those assets could then be underneath the estate tax limit. And that was true when there was a $1 million limit or went up to like $2 million. But a few years ago, the rules changed. So those amounts were doubled. So now that’s how we get the $13.99 million and the $15 million limit. But there’s also the portability of estate tax amounts between spouses. So that means if a husband dies and he doesn’t use his $15 million tax exemption, the wife can elect to keep that $15 million so that she can have $30 million by the time she dies. So it’s really $15 million per person or $30 million per couple starting next year in 2026. So most people that I know don’t have $30 million, even if they’ve got a nice house. I have a friend who he bought a house in Cherry Hills Village for $250,000 45 years ago. That same house is now worth $2.9 or $3.1 million. But still you’re You know, $27 million away from having, you know, it wasn’t like it was the biggest, hugest house ever. If you pay $2.9 million for a house, you’d hope it’s pretty nice. But pay $250 million, you know, it just happened to be in Cherry Hills Village, which increased in value. So a lot of the dollar amounts of do you need a trust or not, the dollar amounts over $30 million, that’s not a whole – not most people that I meet and probably not most people that are listening have more than $30 million, just as a guess. Most people are normal, and my parents, they’ve got their house paid off. But that doesn’t mean that they’re so ridiculously rich. They’re like, oh, hey, we can do anything we want. You know, one point two million dollars sounds like a lot of money until you consider that if you need long term care, a skilled nursing home is going to be, you know, ten to fifteen thousand dollars a month. So now you’re talking about $150,000, $180,000 a year in skilled nursing or memory care if you had memory loss, $150,000 a year. That $1.2 million doesn’t last very long. It can go pretty quick. And people who have less than that, it’s going to go even quicker. That’s just how it goes. So when you’re evaluating, do you need a trust? Do you need a will? A trust can be more complicated than a will. In my case where I have minor children and own property in multiple states, then we don’t want to have just a will because I don’t want my kids to have to go through probate in multiple states. But everybody’s situation is slightly different. So we evaluate, is your situation complex? Is it easy? Can it be solved quickly and easily, or is there more work that needs to go into it? But in any case, I hope that getting your estate plan will be done and will be extremely satisfying, just like the veterinarian who said it was extremely satisfying. I would like to finish your estate plan and let you know that it was extremely satisfying to be able to get it done. So thanks so much for listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on 560KLZ. I am out of time, but John Rush and Rush Reasons are up next. So stay tuned and we’ll talk to 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.
