This week on Mobile Estate Planner Michael Bailey, Mike talks about some of the practical considerations for estate planning, and discusses some of what an estate planner does….and doesn’t do.
[music] Welcome to Mobile Estate Planning with your host, Michael Bailey. Over a decade ago, attorney Michael Bailey turned his attention to a state 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. [music] Good afternoon and welcome to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey, where are you trying to do something besides just leave your family alone. You’re listening to KLZ 560 AM or 100.7 FM, or possibly in the KLZ 560 Radio app. Luke is getting us out to the world at large so that you can hear me and I am not in studio today. I am a remote location calling you because I have a dentist appointment today and I got to get to the dentist. Of course the dentist doesn’t live right next to the studio. I know that’s very heart disheartening for people but it’s how it goes. So you can, if you if want to talk to me on the air, the phone number is 303-4775-6000. Once again that’s 303-4775-6000. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. Once again that’s 720-394-6887. Now today I do have the chance to talk to you remotely. Next week I’m going to be in the City of Provo Utah helping my daughter move into her dorm room. So we have a two o’clock move in time and as much as I’d like to think that we can carry everything in along with several thousand of the other people who are all moving in, I don’t think I’m quite going to be able to make it. So instead we’re going to do it today and next week we can play this program hopefully and then we’ll be like hey that’s probably where Michael is. He’s moving stuff in like yes that is in fact correct. So we were reminded last night of how life appears to be what happens when things don’t go according to plan. We were at, so last yesterday my daughter who plays volleyball had volleyball practice and then we’re also going to be hosting a exchange student from Germany and last night there was supposed to be a mandatory meeting from 7pm to 8pm concern the exchange program. Well and then at 8pm we were supposed to be at, I was supposed to go from where the high school is, out to room field where my daughter’s club volleyball team was going to be so that they could get her fitted for her uniforms. Well that 7pm to 8pm meeting was going to prevent us from getting out to room field on time and so we’re like oh no what are we going to do? So we made arrangements so that we could be a little bit late and we’d be okay. But then of course the German exchange student meeting got moved because why wouldn’t it give moved it would be silly? So my wife went to say it was going from 530 to 630. So my wife went to the 530 to 630 meeting. My daughter after volleyball practice was over around 6 or 615 went over to the German exchange meeting and I got home about 620 and I started making dinner because that seemed like a good thing to do because yeah they were going to be off at meetings and then they could come home we could eat quickly my daughter could start on her homework then we could go off and get fitted for she could get fitted for her volleyball uniform and then we’d be able to come home and my daughter would have another hour and a half or two hours to work on homework and this was a brilliant plan. It was going to work perfectly right up to the point where we got out to the volleyball facility in Brumfield and we got out and as we were there like a mile or two from getting to the facility my car started to tell me that the tire was very low and I’m like great what’s going on with my tire as you know when we get the wonderful and exciting you know alerts from your car you’re like oh the tires lower like it is really though but this time it went straight it was like oh your tires low and it says no it’s critically low and I’m like what the heck are we talking about it’s critically low the other time it did that on me it was a couple years ago when it was completely flat so you know this is what I’m thinking is like yeah maybe it’s just wrong so then we get out and I look at the passenger side rear tire and I can see that it is low then I kind of lean down to get closer to it and I can hear the air escaping from the tires like making hissing sound like well this is not good so apparently I had somehow punched a hole in my tire and it was leaking air so you can hear the sound and I’m like that’s not good that’s not what we’re looking for but so I have a if a portable pump in my car so I grab that and I put it out there so that I could you know pump it back up and it was not really keeping up I’m like oh no this is no good because you know if it goes all the way flat I’m like how am I going to do this there and now I drive the car that does not have a spare tire so you get myself in trouble if it goes all the way flat I’m like I’m going to damage the rim trying to drive to a tire shop and so as we’re there trying to figure it out one of the other parents pulls up pulls up and it says hey everything okay and I’m like well not exactly I mean it’s not too bad but my my tires flat so we’re trying to figure it out and he says oh I have this you know a pump thing in his car so we grabbed the pump out of the car and we plugged it in and it was more powerful than my battery of power pump so it managed to get it up to pressure and then we went from the so we drove from the volleyball facility we figured out where the closest discount tire shop is because a discount tire shop will have tires that will fit my car and also has the right lift because and so I drive out to some model less and so you know not a normal car lift isn’t going to be able to pick that car up and it’s not going to be able to get that you know so I wouldn’t be able to get my tires fixed but we drove it over the I’ve got it all pumped up and I drove it over there was like 2.7 miles away about halfway through the drive I got the your tires critically a little message I’m like yeah yeah so I kind of like lends my way into the parking lot and pulled in and parked it and just left it there overnight so I’m like you know there’s like a mechanic shop there’s a drop box well there’s no drop box for keys at the tire shop but we were able to get the car there and the same friend that had had the news one of the parents of the other volleyball players on my daughter’s club team he drove it over he he took the my wife and my daughter with me are with him so he took them and drove them over to the shop and so we all got there and then my 18-year-old who is yet to go off to college we called her and we’re like hey can you come pick us up at the tire store so she came to pick us up at the tire store and so it was a whole adventure that we did not expect to be happening because that’s how things go and how life goes is that unexpected adventures happen and unexpected things happen and you know this turned out to be you know it wasn’t ideal but it wasn’t the worst thing ever and so we you know I end it was nice that you know we happen to have a friend there who could help with that we could have a friend there who could help with other stuff and you know get me what I needed but it was it was just an interesting time to have everything go not the way that we wanted it to go but you know it worked out okay because of all the various circumstances and so you are listening to a mobile state planning with Michael Bailey here on 560 KLC also heard on 100.7 FM or you can be listening in on the KLC 560 radio app for no more to talk to me on the air is 303-4775-6000 and again that’s 303-4775-6000 and my direct line is 720-394-6887 and once again that’s 720-394-6887 so so it’s about 830 at night or 830 at a discount tire shop discount tire store and just kind of hanging out in the parking lot and my daughter mentions that she was thirsty from you know she’d gone to volleyball practice and so on and so forth and she’s like well I’m going to drink some catered when I get home like well we can do that or we’re going to be waiting about a half an hour and we need to have we need to have those so walked across there was a we were near a King Super’s or near a gas station so we walked over and got her a thing of catered so that she wasn’t thirsty and all that kind of stuff and it was just it worked out well and so then of course we go oh well what do we need to do now how do we get those you know we’ve got to get the car fixed we’ve got to get we’ve got to get the tires fixed and I just do all of that well as it turned out my wife had a hair appointment today so she just was to get her haircut and styled and things like that she’s like well I can move that and I’m like well because we’re out in Brumfield where my main office is and like I can bring would come out in the morning and we can drop you we can I get the you know we can talk to the tire store people and they can start working on it and then she brought her work computer with her this morning so we ended up out of my office um and we well and so we got those so we got the um so we came up this morning and we got asked for new tires and we got the so that we picked which new tires to get because the tire that had been gone flat was you know sat there all night with a car on it and those all the way dead and like yep that sounds about right you know we’ve got all the way dead tires so we got to get a new one and of course when you get a new one you have to get at least two new ones but with the way that the tussles work you know four new ones made the most sense so we had four new tires so I now have four new tires and my wiper blades died um in the rain a couple of days ago so I got new wiper blades so I have new tires new wiper blades and all sorts of fun stuff for the car and none of this is anything that I expected well okay so we were one of the neighborhoods that got hit by all of the hail several uh a couple of months ago so the sounds of the summer have been the scraping in the morning of pulling off people’s roofs and then the banging and then the um you’re kind of pounding in the nails in the morning and then you know putting the new roof on and then the uh the nail guns putting everything in so in my neighborhood there’s lots of as much as the roofers would like to say that they pick up every single nail um it doesn’t quite happen you know nails fall off that’s what they do they end up on the road and now we’ve had two of our three cars end up with punctured tires and we’re like huh well that’s no good but still it’s okay and the the way that things turned out because if if this had happened two weeks from today my 18 year old would be off at college and wouldn’t have had the chance to come save us from the um from everything if we had been on I know it could have been you know a different day where my wife had a full work schedule and we had a point in the schedule so she couldn’t come out to help me get tires then you know and you know I ended up where have you know I do you know there’s a multiple state planning attorney I traveled around quite a bit um but I um don’t have um yeah it just worked out that I could be here working at my room field office so my wife had to take the car and she would pick up something for work and then she came here and then we sat in the same office and used the same Wi-Fi connection and then when the car was ready we went back and picked it up and you know all the things worked the way they wanted to you know so so worked out the way it worked out well even if it wasn’t ideal and so um it was just it kind of I mean it didn’t 100% remind me of a state planning so but it is it did remind me a little bit of the state planning because I got a call from where I got a couple calls this week from people who somebody had passed away and the um and the person who had passed away so it was the survivors of the person who had passed away like oh well what do I need to do and I said well okay one of them um and one of them had a trust so I was like well you you need to follow the instructions of the trust you know one of them had a will and so I said well you’re going to need to take the will to probate court and go through the the process like oh well you know well how do I do probate and I said well you can find the you find the instructions to probate online and I told them where they could go to find the probate instructions to probate online because the color of your jeez here publishes the forms that are necessary for probate and then they also publish one of the forms they publish is the instructions for probate with a will so I told them how to go do that and I had one person was like well what would you charge me to you know fill out all the paperwork and handle a lot of this for me I said well it’s not a service that I offer so I wouldn’t want to take it on at least not for some of the money that you would want me if you would want to pay me because since I don’t handle probate cases I’m going to try to get up to speed on everything and I’m going to try to learn all the rules and how to follow all of them then it’s going to take me a fair amount of time just you know to look at all the rules and try to figure them all out make sure everything I mean I can follow the I can follow the instructions as well as anybody else can but I don’t miss him but because that would be taking away from other clients and you know I’ve been focused on the planning side of things it just I’m like well I don’t really want to be responsible for all of that hitting all the deadlines and everything so because it’s a service I don’t offer there’s not a price because I wouldn’t offer it and I wouldn’t do it for you and they’re like oh that’s too bad I’m my next sentence was but I do have friends who practice in that area of law who handle probate cases and handle you know that’s what they do and I’d be happy to refer you to them and they could give you a price and so they were happy to have their referral and you know I’m always if somebody needs something and it’s not doesn’t happen to be something that I do personally I usually have somebody who knows how to do things and is usually willing I can you know refer out what I don’t do to somebody who is able to handle that on their own and so we do that but I’ve found that when it comes to administering a trust or to going through the probate process with a will you know everybody takes one thing to be simple everything everybody wants things to be smooth everybody wants things to just flow and be like immediate and automatic but that’s just not how things work there is still work to be done there’s still things that need to happen so you are listening to mobile state planning with Michael Bailey here on KLZ 560 also heard on 100.7 FM or the KLZ radio app phone over to talk to me on the air is 303-4775-6000 and again that’s 303-4775-6000 and my direct line is 720-394-6887 and once again that’s 720-394-6887 so you know I mean people want things to happen automatically and I tell people unlike automatic is not a word that exists in my state planning vocabulary there’s almost always something to be done so even if you have all the beneficiary designations and everything so let’s say you have an IRA you’re like okay I’ve got my beneficiary designations if I die everything goes to my spouse cool well then if you die your spouse is like well how come it’s not just being sent out well that the company that administers the IRA is not going to keep track of every person who they’re administering something for and they’re not going to check up on you and in the morning be like oh it looks like person X has woken up cool we don’t need to worry about paying things out and they don’t have a department that scours the I guess those are on the internet now you see the newspaper they don’t have somebody that scours those type of things looking for who’s died so they can be right on top of it and jump in and pay everything out instead of the survivor who is a beneficiary would need to contact the company that administers the IRA and say hey mister you know so and so has died you know we need to have the money pay out to me as a beneficiary and then there is usually a form there’s almost always a form that needs to be filled out and most of the time you need a desk certificate to prove that in fact the person has died and that you’re not just making that up and then you go through that process and usually it’s a fairly quick in it’s a fairly quick process but it still needs to be done same goes with life insurance if somebody dies the life insurance company isn’t going to be you know and i’m pretty good friends with the with my insurance agent i’m good friends with you know we found out that we graduated like the same year of high school and we were kind of we’ve probably played against each other in various sporting contests we just didn’t recognize each other 20 years later when we met up but if somebody dies you have to go to the life insurance company and say hey they’ve died to get a payout they’re not going to track you down just because that’s not part of what they’re doing so you have survivors or the person who’s in charge of your will or your trust the benefit or the person representative or the successor trustee who that their responsibility is to go track those things down and now having a will or trust does make that entire process easier it says exactly where things are supposed to go but there’s still work to be done same things goes for like a bank account here you go to go to a bank say oh well you know my dad died so i need all the money from his account well the bank’s not going to be like oh sure let me just pay out all this money to somebody they’re going to request that you go find however much they’re going to request that you go through their process and you know we have to there’s probably a form there’s probably a there’s likely going to be the need for a good does sort of get to show that the person hasn’t has banks and financial institutions and life insurance companies and new people who administer IRAs they don’t want to pay out money to people who they’re not supposed to because if they do and then the correct version comes along so let’s say that I’m never listening to you a little bit of alchemist show right before I came on and you know all the ways that people do it so let’s say that a an interloper or a you know a near-do-well comes and says hey you know you know talks to the IRA company the company is from the IRA and so say you know person x has died you need to pay out the money to person y okay so they start paying out the money to person y and then eventually person x actually dies and the real beneficiary calls up and says oh well I need to pay this out and the life insurance for the IRA administration company goes we already paid that money out to this person and they’re like well that wasn’t the right person so now you need to pay us too and so the the company or the bank or the life insurance company they don’t want to give money to the wrong person because if they do they’re on the hook for giving that money to the right person and I don’t know about the rest of you I mean even the giant bank if they pay out twice on everything they’re not going to have nearly as much money you know if I how I was like oh well I’m going to go buy tires for my car so I bought tires for the car today and then they’re like oh well we’re just going to charge you twice and like well since I’m ridiculously rich you know Luke calls me money bags you know since I’m not ridiculously rich I can’t afford just to pay twice for everything and even though you know insurance companies or IRA companies they may have significant assets they don’t want to pay out twice and they don’t want to pay the wrong people and that’s perfectly understandable it’s absolutely the way it should be and we don’t really want people to have to we don’t I mean I wouldn’t want somebody to come in and be able to claim the money that’s in my bank account however little it is and I don’t want somebody to come in and claim the money in your bank account unless it’s somebody who is either you or somebody who should be receiving those assets and so everything happening seamlessly or automatic or things like that sounds great except that you want to put the protections in place so that it goes to the right place because we don’t necessarily want your assets and we want your assets to go to the right place if it takes a little bit of work and we have to do some paperwork and some and jump through some hoops to show that it’s going to the right place ultimately that is for the benefit for your benefit because we want it to be achieved and so because of that we have all sorts of you know there’s the protections in place and those protections and you know doing things the right way it’s all guided by your estate planning documents your estate planning documents don’t eliminate the need to do work they just say where things are supposed to go and guide it properly so that even once you go through the process there will be you know things will go where you want them to and I feel like people get concerned about that with estate planning more than they might otherwise as in sometimes human like if my daughter is going to go play volleyball she has to go through practice she has to learn how and it’s not just that volleyball magically appears and she’s like oh hey now I know how to play volleyball go me you know there is a process and that’s the same with the estate planning there’s a process sometimes you know with the planning process tries to make it as smooth as possible but we do try to get there so my music tells me that my time is up so thank you so much for listening to mobile estate planning with Michael Bailey I will be back in studio in a couple of weeks but in the meantime I have a great day and stay tuned let’s listen to John Tricia and Russ Theresa thanks and bye mobile estate planning with Michael Bailey will return to ATX next Wednesday at 230 here on KLZ 560 AM 560 FM 100.7 and online at kelzradio.com
