Join Michael Bailey as he shares heartfelt stories of his daughter’s transition to college life and ties it to the significant matter of estate planning. Discover how new experiences, both in education and life, shape our planning processes and the critical steps involved in estate planning. Whether you’re familiar with legal jargon or just starting your journey, this episode offers valuable perspectives on preparing for the future and cherishing family bonds.
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, also heard on 100.7 FM or the KLZ 560 radio app. I’m glad to be back in person. The last couple of weeks were just not quite the right time to, I mean, it was actually Christmas itself and then New Year’s. So those were times where I thought maybe I’d spend some time with my family instead of being here because as we’re trying to do, we’re trying to We’ll do something besides just leaving our family alone. So, here we are, and here’s what we’re going to do. Now, the last couple weeks, my… daughter was home from college so I was spending more time with her and less time on the radio you know I hope everybody maybe some people miss me maybe other people just didn’t even notice I was gone it’s hard to tell you know perhaps I have some super loyal listeners I don’t know um but it’s one of those um well things that uh we’ve got our uh so she she was home and you know it was an interesting thing where she um just her first semester at school her uh her um The finals kind of were a little bit overwhelming. And I can understand that. That can, you know, for most college students, the first time you go off to college, you don’t 100% know what to expect. And, of course, that’s exactly, you know, how it should be. You’ve never been to college. You’ve never been a college student. You know, to take a college final as opposed to a high school final. Now, this is my daughter who has always been good at school and she’s always had she’s always done well at school and straight A’s and that kind of thing. She’s at school on an academic scholarship. She’s taken many AP classes and she’s taken AP tests that have are comprehensive in nature and things like that. So it’s not like she’s not familiar with the concept of how to do study and do academics, but it’s a little bit different in a college setting. And her first final that she took was a Calculus II final. And she did not do as well in that final as she had hoped. It went very poorly, actually. And so she calls us and she was freaking out about it and she was very concerned and she was upset and crying and all the things that happen when you take your first final and do poorly on it. I mean, I guess the rest of us were like, yep, that’s kind of what happens. You get used to it. But for her, it was a brand new experience. And so I talked with her and, you know, just like, well, you know, let’s let’s wait and see how it plays out. You know, there’s probably I mean, if you’ve been the one of the top students in the class most of the time. My guess is that lots of other people didn’t do particularly well on the final, which means you might have a curve there where your professor will realize that maybe they wrote a test that doesn’t quite capture what they taught you or they ask you a question that was outside of what they taught you and just kind of you know didn’t really capture you know what you learned in the class and so they might throw some of those questions out or just curve it and you’ll be able to be okay but of course she was very concerned about this and still um and so you know for a day or two she was really worried about it And then she called again, and I was talking to her, and I said, well, here’s the thing, kiddo, is that we can’t do anything about that. We can’t do anything about the test that’s been taken and graded and done. And it was the multiple choice portion that she hadn’t done great on. There’s a short answer portion that still needed to be graded at that point and such things. But she… I said, but here’s the thing. You have three more finals to go. You have a chemistry final, you have a biology final, and you have your University 101 final. So you have these three finals left. If you spend all of your time dwelling on how this other one didn’t go well, you’ll probably find yourself making silly mistakes and not doing particularly well on your next finals. Yeah. So it is unfortunate that it was your first final that didn’t go particularly well or as well as you had hoped. But we also don’t want to let that one final be the reason that everything else in your first semester falls apart. And so I’m like, you’re allowed to be sad. You’re allowed to be upset. I’m not saying, hey, get over it. But what I’m saying is at some point, you need to put that one kind of in the past, move on from it so that you can accomplish the next set of finals that you have. And so that was the last time I talked to her. And then she went through her finals. And then I was the one that picked her up from the airport. And she said, Dad, I don’t know if you know this, but I really took that advice to heart. I didn’t, you know, I just, you know, eventually I was just like, you know what? I’ve got to study for chemistry. I’ve got to study for biology. I can’t just sit here and, you know, not pay attention to anything. So I really did that. And it was great because then I could do well in my other finals and everything worked out. And I was like, cool. I’m so excited for you. That is so awesome. It made me feel like I had done something right as a dad, which was, you know, mostly saying, yes, I’ve been a college student before. I know how that goes. So here’s what I did. Hopefully it works for you. And it wasn’t I don’t think it was terrible advice to say, hey, you know, be sad about your thing, but then move on to the next final so that you’re not always stuck doing, you know, being weighed down by all the things you’ve done in the past. But she was home for two and a half weeks, which we thought we’d have all sorts of time to do everything and get everything done that we needed to. And then suddenly it was time to take her to the airport on Monday so she could go back. She started school again yesterday. And we’re like, wow, two and a half weeks seems like a long amount of time. It seems like you’re going to be able to. Go to your favorite restaurants and you’ll see your friends when you’re home from school and you get to hang out with your family and you’ll get to, you know, go to the various church concerts and things like that that are involved in Christmas. It seemed like all of these things were going to have plenty of time. And then suddenly there she was and we’re like, oh, I will see you in the end of April, kiddo. because she’s off to school again and you know she’s doing great there and she’s wonderful but it’s amazing how you know it was a new experience and that new experience meant that she would not be able to necessarily you know it was a new experience for her and as a new experience she didn’t know quite what to expect you know everything that she’d done for you know doing academics in high school and AP tests and stuff she thought had prepared her for everything that she needed to know for college and it was close but you know it’s it’s slightly different and you know I mean I I had the same experience when I went to college I had the same experience when I went to law school I’m like okay this will be Just kind of more of, and I was like, oh, this is a little bit different. In law school, we didn’t get midterm tests and homework and stuff like that that we needed to turn in. It was, hey, here’s a final. Show us everything that you’ve learned and we’ll go from there. Or as we used to say, it’s our chance to pool our mutual ignorance so that we could be involved. And so it was just a brand new experience for her. And she ended up getting an A in the calculus class because there was in fact a curve and all that kind of stuff. And then Her calculus teacher asked her if she would like to be a TA for the class. And so we’re like, well, maybe you didn’t do nearly as poorly as you thought you did. But it was kind of an interesting thing. Great to have her home. Great to see her. Great that she could spend time with our other daughter who had missed her terribly and play with her and just have good sibling relationships. But You know, just new experience. And now she’s going to go back and it’ll be a different experience. Second semester won’t be exactly the same, but now she has more experience with it. So you are listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on 560 KLZ. Also heard on 100.7 FM or the KLZ 560 radio app. Phone number to talk to me on the air is 303-477-5600. And again, that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. Once again, that’s 720-394-6887. So my my daughter, having gone off to college and when she was applying for college, we mostly let her do the application all by herself. And then when she wanted some help with the essays, I would read through and say, well, here’s a couple of suggestions. What do you think about this? But. And when she went off to college, I mean, when we took her there, she was a little bit scared. Okay, a lot scared. And, you know, a little bit unsure, a lot unsure. But we encouraged her to do all the things she needed to do after freshman orientation when she was 16. overwhelmed we took her to get some food and to just kind of rest with us and have a safe place and then we’re like well kiddo now we’re gonna we have to drive back to Colorado now so we’ll wish you the best of luck and you know we’ll see you at Thanksgiving and so her level of experience of living on her own was zero her level of experience with difficult academics was higher than that But she couldn’t enter college with any more or any less experience than what she had. You know, we couldn’t have gone back in time and said, oh, well, let’s make sure we have you take a college class here or there. When, you know, in my high school, I had gotten a year ahead in math. So my senior year, I took a Calculus 3 class, which was not offered at the high school, but was offered at the CSU when I grew up in Fort Collins. So I would go in the morning to an 8 a.m. Calculus 3 class. Now, for those of you who have gone to college, you’re thinking, 8 a.m., that is way too early for a college class. Why in the world would anybody want to go to a college class at 8 a.m.? And having been through college, I totally agree with you. But as a high school student where I was up at 5.30 in the morning and to a early morning church seminary class by 6.45 and done with that by 7.30 or 7.45, I’m like, well, I’m already up. I can be at the class and… It was one of those things where the first day of class, there were probably 35 of us in the room. Midway through the semester, there were six or seven of us who actually attended the 8 a.m. class. I was one of the stalwart ones, apparently, or at least one of the ones that woke up in time to get to an 8 a.m. class. So I had had a little bit of experience in what it was like to take a college-level class and a college-level final. And so I went off to college possibly a little bit more confident, maybe even a little bit overconfident compared to my daughter. But we all enter into college, if we go, with different levels of experience. I have some friends who they had done two years of junior college before they came to the university. Others had transferred from a different university. I have a friend who she had graduated from high school at age 16. And so she entered BYU as a freshman. at age 16 turned 17 her freshman year you know I was not that young and I thought that was a little bit it seemed like it might be a little bit too young to go to college to me you know not quite Doogie Howser MD where you enter med school at age 14 but still We all entered college or we all entered school with our level and our requisite knowledge and experience that we had. And I find that’s very similar to clients who come to me for estate planning. Someone will come for estate planning and they’ll say, That they’ve got, they have never, they’ve heard the word will, they’ve heard the will trust, they’ve heard the will power of attorney, they’ve heard the word agent, they’ve heard the word executor or executrix. Most people have heard executor, not executrix. One’s a boy, one’s a girl. So executor’s a boy, executrix is a girl. But they may have heard of these words, but that’s anything they’ve ever heard of. Those are very novice type of people. They’ve just not been exposed to estate planning and they often are looking for a lot of guidance on what in the heck are we supposed to do and how do we do things? Well, I have an intake worksheet that asks a whole bunch of questions about what your family situation is like. How old are your kids? How many kids do you have? What’s your asset situation like? What type of assets do you have? Do you own a home? Do you own 23 rental real estate properties? Do you own zero rental real estate properties? Do you have an IRA? Do you have a 401k? Do you have an investment account that rivals Warren Buffett? So you’re a multi-billionaire, you know, there’s just, you know, there’s different types of assets are treated different ways. So, you know, I want to know what your family situation is like, you know, Are you on your first marriage? Are you on your second or third marriage? Do you have kids from different marriages? Do you have kids at all? Those type of things help dictate what are we trying to do. Do we want to leave money to the kids? Do we not want to leave money to the kids? do we i think that it would be more beneficial you know if you’re a blended marriage and you know you got married later in life so you found the love of your life when you’re in your 50s but you have you each had kids from a previous relationship do you want to leave all of the combined money to all of the kids or do you want to have your money go to one set of kids and the other person’s money go to a all of these situations we have to talk about. And then we have to talk about who do you trust to leave in charge of things? Who’s going to be that personal representative or that executor or executrix? Who’s going to be the person who is in charge of carrying out your plans and your instructions? Because those are important things to know. And do you want to have your assets be given outright to people or do you want to hold on to them for a while? I have a My 18-year-old, at this point, legally, I could give her one-third of all of the assets and do it outright and be like, okay, good luck. The 15-year-old, the state of Colorado thinks that 15 is a little bit too young to give outright assets to. And my 12-year-old, who is even younger, the state of Colorado also thinks it’s not a great idea to give outright assets to a 12-year-old. So for my 12-year-old and my 15-year-old, we want to establish a… a trust so that the money can be held and used for their health, education, support and maintenance. I have the same thing for my 18 year old, because although my 18 year old would be capable of handling most everything by herself, it’s probably not the best idea to just, you know, she’s an 18 year old freshman who is a little bit overwhelmed by finals. well, if my wife and I die, and we put her in charge of everything, we’re like, well, hey, well, why don’t you drop out of college, come home, and just raise your brother and sister, and everything will be fine. That sounds great, and that sounds wonderful, and it sounds like the plot of some sort of, you know, comedy movie with all the misadventures of what’s going to happen when that, you know, when mom and dad die, and An older sibling is raising the younger siblings, you know, any number of options. I mean, going all the way back to like elementary school and reading about the boxcar children and how they they lost their parents. They were orphans. So they lived in a boxcar and they found a tea set in the dump and all these kind of things. Well, I don’t think that social services would be so keen on boxcar children at this point. Just, you know. It was set long before social services were really as involved in as much of a thing as they are now. But for me, I don’t necessarily want my 18-year-old to have to have and shoulder that level of responsibility. It might have been different back in the 1800s when it was like, oh, well, you’re going to take over the farm. Okay, cool. Well, that’s what you’re going to do anyway is take over the farm, so you just accelerate the time frame. Well, I don’t know that my 18-year-old was ever going to take over raising her 15- and 12-year-old. So we’ve chosen to have a sibling and their family who would be able to raise the 15-year-old and the 12-year-old. And we chose them. They chose us. So we’re both the biggest fans of absolutely nothing happening to the other couple. We’re like, oh, hey, are you exercising? Are you getting enough sleep? Are you eating your vegetables? Are we doing well? You know, all those type of things, you know, because we don’t want to have to do anything. We want them to live long, happy, healthy lives so that we don’t have to do anything. And, you know, that’s when you’re picking somebody who is going to carry out your estate. You really hope it’s somebody who wants you to live a long, happy, healthy life so that you don’t have to do anything. So you are listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on 560 KLZ, also heard on 100.7 FM or the KLZ 560 radio app. Phone number to talk to me on the air is 303-477-5600. And again, that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. Again, that’s 720-394-6887. So my daughter off at school is kind of a novice at school. She’s got a little bit of experience now. But she’s going into her second semester, but then she’ll go back next year and she’ll be a sophomore and then she’ll be a junior and then she’ll be a senior and then she’ll graduate and all of those milestones and steps. My 15-year-old is going to be a junior next year. And we were talking with the volleyball coach the other day and he’s like, wow, you’re going to be a junior. You’re an upperclassman now. And she’s like, whoa, how did that happen? Because she still is You know, remembering being the scared freshman going to tryouts, wondering if she was going to make a team that, you know, she made JV as a freshman and then, you know, started as a sophomore and the accolades of all state and honorable or sorry, all conference and honorable mention all state. That’s what she managed to accomplish. It’s like, hey, well, good for you, kiddo. You’ve got more experience. So some people who come to me for estate planning have more experience. They’ve either been involved in carrying out their parents’ estate plan, or they previously put together an estate plan. I had someone who called me yesterday who they’d put together their entire estate plan with another attorney, And then just never got it signed. And then the other attorney just kind of somehow disappeared. And so they wanted to know if I could just look at it, make sure it looked all okay, and if we could get it signed. Now, that one, I said, I don’t really give my stamp of approval to other people’s work. If we wanted to start over, we could. But you’ve got everything, and the last step is just to get it signed. I’m like, you just need a notary for that. You don’t necessarily need me if everything was already in place. You just need a notary to get everything signed, witness notarized, and you’re good. And so I kind of talked them out of needing to work with me to do extra work, but instead… pushed them towards, why don’t you go ahead and just, you know, find a notary. And I gave them some, you know, names and numbers of a couple of notaries that I know who could be able to help them just to get everything finished off. But I’m like, there’s not a whole lot of need for you to pay for my services and me to redo things when you’ve already got it. You just didn’t get it signed before the holidays. And then your other attorney disappeared, which is, I hope not to disappear. But at some point, I do hope to retire and not be practicing law. And I hope that sometime before my retirement is not, oh, look, he was on his way to his signing and he dropped dead of a heart attack. That would not be a great thing. A 95-year-old attorney hobbling down the hallway and not making it to his signing. That just doesn’t seem like that’s not what I want to do. If at all possible, I’d like to maybe not have that be. The end of my thing. So someone who has more experience with estate planning may not need the same level of guidance and understanding as someone who has no experience. So someone with no experience or someone who has had multiple estate plans, they might need to redo something and do something different. My client I talked to this morning said, were redoing their trust because their trust is now 25 years old and it was done under the tax rules 25 years ago. And there was lots of properties that were involved from when they used to live in Illinois and just all sorts of different things. So many things have changed. Their kids are all grown now. Whereas back when they were prior to 25 years ago, the kids were young. So there’s a lot less need for saying who will raise them and a lot more need for, well, how do we address the assets that they’ve acquired? They’ve acquired a decent amount of assets, so they’re worried about getting it to their kids. And the wife was adamant that it had to go to the kids and not to the spouses of the kids. So I was like, OK, we’ll make sure it goes to the kids or to the grandkids and not to the spouses. You know, that was something that was super important to this particular client. I’m like, okay, cool. We can make that happen. Other people, they want their, uh, they want their, uh, assets to either go to their kids or, you know, they kind of see their, the spouses of their kids as their own kids too. So they’re okay with money going to those kids. Either one is fine. And one of the levels I’ve found of estate planning experience that’s an interesting one is the, oh, well, you know, what happens if this? And I say, well, what do you want to have happen? No, but just tell me what happens. I’m like, well, there’s no one right answer. There’s no one right way for everything to be done. I want to figure out what you want to do so that we can make that happen. Because they might be asking, hey, what are the default rules? And I’m like… Well, the default rules are this, but if you don’t like those, then we can modify them to have what you want to have happen take place. So people will say, well, you know, what happens if my wife and I both die at the same time? You know, what happens to our money? I’m like, well, are all of your kids, both of your kids? Well, yes. Okay, cool. Then it will likely go to them. It just goes through intestate. probate and anticipate probate means to die without a will. And, you know, you have to follow the rules that the state of Colorado has laid out. And so people are like, Oh, well, you know, I don’t, but you know, I just, I just don’t know what those rules are. I’m like, well, instead of spending time trying to figure them out, why don’t we figure out what you want to do? And then we’ll write down what you want to do. And then we’ll leave the land of what the default rules say. And then we can go ahead and accomplish what we want by bringing your wishes to pass. And most people agree that that’s a good idea. Some people want to know all of the intestate rules. And I’m like, cool, I will print out the intestate statute. I’ll hand it to you and you can read through it. They’re like, well, why don’t you just tell me what it is? I’m like, because it’s 87 pages long and I really don’t want to go through and explain 87 pages of what the statute says. It’s just not what I’m super keen on doing. It just doesn’t seem like it would be nearly as much fun for me. So whatever your level of experience is, whatever your level of familiarity is with estate planning, we can start from that level and get your estate plan prepared so that you can get everything done and taken care of. Because even if you think you know everything about estate planning, I mean, if you do know everything about estate planning, that’s amazing. I do not. I know there’s just, especially with people who have taxable estates and things like that, that’s not where I play. I help people who are not ridiculously rich and have more than $27 million. I mean, if you’ve got more than $27 million, good for you. I do not, and most people I meet do not. But no matter what your situation is, try to get you helped out and taken care of. I guess I’m out of time for now. 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.
