SPEAKER 05 : 0:05

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 : 0:57

All right, good afternoon. Welcome to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on 560 KLZ AM and 100.7 FM. So we can do something besides just leave you alone or leave your family alone. I mean, if you’re out there all alone, please feel free to call me. I will be happy to talk to you. Phone number to talk to me in 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. Now, this is the time of year where we really get concerned about being alone and feeling alone and We’re two weeks from today is Christmas Eve. I just realized that the other day. I’m like, you know, every time I was just down in Phoenix for Thanksgiving, and now suddenly I’m two weeks away from Christmas, and I realize they’re only like four weeks apart, but still. And I’m like, wait, what just happened here? Now, we have a pile of boxes right next to our Christmas tree because I put up the Christmas tree and put the lights on it, but we haven’t gotten to putting the ornaments on it. So it’s just kind of sitting there half done and half decorated. But the boxes that come from, as much as it was, like you think of Black Friday, and I remember getting up at like 2 or 3 in the morning, and we were going to go and sit in line to get a really good sale on a digital camera or a camcorder or something like that. And I’m like, well, they’re all online, so I can click the buy now, and it’ll be delivered to my house. And whether that’s good or bad, I will make no comment on. But we’ve got a stack of things that are there that we’ve found for… what our kids wanted for Christmas or we want for Christmas. And so we’re doing that. And so I did get all of my Christmas lights up. I decorate the outside and put them on the house. And then the wind the last couple of days has been not my friend because the wind decided to be wind. And I don’t think it decided anything. It was just wind. but it knocked over i have a i have an ornament arch it’s like a red arch that has twinkling lights on it and it got knocked over in the wind i’m like grr and then i have a i have a christmas llama because everybody needs a christmas llama right i know luke has a christmas llama and you know he doesn’t talk about his christmas llama because he doesn’t want anybody to know about his christmas llama so i’ve exposed your deep dark secret luke i’m sorry how dare you you don’t actually have a christmas llama do you

SPEAKER 07 : 3:38

No. Last I checked, I don’t, at least. Unless one’s been stealthily delivered to me without my knowledge, then.

SPEAKER 01 : 3:44

Right. Well, I found a Christmas llama on clearance at Target once, and I’m like, I need a Christmas llama. It came along with a Christmas narwhal and a Christmas shark. So I have a Christmas llama, narwhal, and shark. Because everybody knows that when you think of Christmas, you think of narwhals and llamas and sharks. That’s usually what comes to mind.

SPEAKER 07 : 4:02

Got a whole Christmas zoo.

SPEAKER 01 : 4:03

Yeah. Well, I have lots of snowmen family. The snowmen all came through just fine. The gingerbread man seems to be doing okay. Ornament Arch got knocked over. My candy canes looked like they kind of got knocked over and fell down. So I was like, yeah, I’ll put those up this weekend or something, fix them this weekend. Because it’s not going to make that much of a difference to try to fix them right now. And then last night, it was probably about nine o’clock at night, I was looking out my window at the roof right above the deck and there was lights that didn’t quite look like they were supposed to be there. So I pulled up the shades and the wreath, the lighted wreath that I have on my house had gotten blown off. So at nine o’clock at night last night, I climbed out a window and went and reattached the wreath. And, you know, so, and I, I still need to on the other part of my house, I have some hanging snowflake lights that have been blown up onto the top roof. So I’ll need to go get those and bring them back down. So otherwise, you know, there’s like a bare spot on the house and we can’t have a bare spot on the house. That would be no good. Um, But I got all that done and now I just have to repair it and put it back together, but it’s not too bad. Still have some Christmas shopping to do. My 16 year old has a whole list I’ve got a whole list of this is what I need for Christmas. It’s all laid out, and we can decide what of that list, if part of it or some of it or none of it, we’re going to get for her. My 19-year-old is kind of like, oh, I don’t really need anything. I’m like, you’re a college student. How do you not need anything? There’s got to be something that we can get you that would be useful or helpful for your college experience. So we’ll see what we can get for her, the 13-year-old. He’s really into the Nuggets. He’s really into basketball and playing and watching. And so he wants some new basketball shoes and some new things. And because he sprained his ankle last Friday, he was playing volleyball in PE and landed on somebody’s foot and turned his ankle off. So now they’re in playoffs. So he had a playoff game on Monday, and he’s got another one tomorrow. And so I keep an ankle brace in my basketball officiating bag because sometimes you go to cut and you hurt your ankle just a little bit. I’m like, well, if I turn it bad enough, I’m not just going to be like, oh, I’m just going to walk away from the game. But, you know, so I put it on. So on Monday night, I got to the school and I walked in and my wife had gone to Walgreens and gotten some sort of ankle support thing. It was a little bit like a. Kind of a compression sock type of thing. I’m like, yeah, that’s not going to work. So I went out and fortunately I had a compression or I had an ankle brace in my car. And I’m like, cool, I have an ankle brace in my car. And so I went and got it and brought it and put it on him and laced it up tight and did the little strap things and everything. I’m like, okay, now you can go play a basketball game. And he wasn’t necessarily 100% effective, but he was a lot more effective than he would have been had he turned his ankle again and such things. We saw that with the Nuggets. Jamal Murray sprained his ankle, and they taped it up good, and he scored 52 points the next time out. That was pretty awesome. But apparently last night my son and my wife, they went to, they were going to go return something to a store and buy something else. And as they were going, they pulled up the BYU versus Clemson basketball game on the phone. Because, you know, that’s my wife and I both being BYU alumni. And BYU’s basketball team being a top 10 team this year, we’re like, hey, you know, and so he was excited to watch it. Well, I did not watch it because I was both working and then off refereeing a high school basketball game. So my wife says to me, oh, we should probably watch the highlights of that. I’m like, okay. And I didn’t know that she knew the outcome of the game. So we were watching the game and in the first half, the first half ended with BYU giving up a 21 to zero run. So they were down 21 points at halftime. Well, that’s not what you’re looking for. But they slowly built their way back and actually built like a five or six point lead towards the end of the second half, which then ended up tied with 1.3 seconds left. So an inbounds play and the BYU guard threw up a three pointer that went in at the buzzer. Not quite NCAA tournament, March Madness type of thing, but very similar style. And they ended up winning the game by three. I was like, hey, that’s really cool. I was like, oh, that’s awesome. They’re like, yeah, we saw it before. I’m like, ah, well, thank you for not ruining it for me. Appreciate that. You don’t want to ruin basketball games. Don’t want to ruin Christmas. Don’t want to ruin other things. There’s all of these things you want to do. And you don’t necessarily want to ruin your estate plan either. Is that a stretch? Heck yes, it is. It’s a big stretch. But it made sense to me when I first said it out loud. Now I’ll stop. Anyhow. So you don’t want to ruin your estate plan. And there’s lots of different ways to ruin your estate plan. There’s lots of different ways to not set it up correctly. So it’s much easier if you set your estate plan up correctly than if you go ahead and ruin your estate plan. So you are listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on KLZ 560 AM. Also heard on 100.7 FM or the KLZ 560 radio app. Phone number to talk to me on the air is 303-477-5600. And again, that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. And once again, 720-394-6887. So, you know, we talk about, you know, it can be, it seems, you know, I made stories earlier about how it can feel like it’s a simple thing. You’re like, oh, estate planning, simple thing. Write down who you want to get your assets and then it’ll be good. I’m like, yes, but oh, it’s not quite that simple. You also are supposed to name somebody to be your personal representative or your successor trustee. who will be in charge of things when you’re gone. So it’s not just, oh, here’s who gets it. It’s, oh, and here’s who’s supposed to be in charge. Because who’s in charge of things can be every bit as important as who you’re leaving stuff to. Sometimes people get upset about who’s in charge. I do have lots of clients who will ask me, oh, is it a problem if a person who’s in charge is also a beneficiary? I’m like, it shouldn’t be. It’s not a prohibited conflict. how it’s set up you know because a lot of times like so in my family i have you know there’s four of us kids in my family i have an older sister and two younger brothers so there’s four of us and i am set up as the um successor, trustee, and personal representative. So when my parents die, I will be in charge of distributing things out. Now we have it, my parents have it set up so that it goes in equal amounts to each of us. So one quarter to each of us. And so if one of my siblings is upset and says, oh, well, this isn’t right. I’ll say, well, here’s the total number. Do you want to multiply it by 25% or divide by four and tell me if you get the number that I got? So we’ll just take a look and see. That’ll be fine. But I don’t, you know, I’m not necessarily going to take any extra for, you know, being the representative is just, you know, kind of what needs to be done. So as we have that, you know, as I go through that, you know, I’ll be the one who’s in charge. Now, sometimes it’s not the greatest idea to put one sibling over another in charge. Sometimes you have the sibling who’s, you know, I’ve worked with families where one sibling always seems to be struggling with money and never quite has enough and is always looking for help from the siblings for Christmas or needs the siblings to help just cover the rent payment or the mortgage payment just for a month or two until they can get back where they need to be. And sometimes that sibling is, you know, oh, well, you know, I’ll get you back in a month or two. And then a month or two turns into a year or two or a decade or two or a decade or seven or eight or however many it is. And, you know, this person is not going to get paid back. You know, there’s not going to pay it back. And we get that. That’s that’s how, you know, not everybody. has money free-flowing like some people do, and I’m certainly not a free-flowing money type of person. I know Luke is. Luke keeps his free-flowing money with his Christmas llama. And so…

SPEAKER 07 : 13:08

It’s a river that the llama drinks from.

SPEAKER 01 : 13:09

Yes. Flowing money. Just free-flowing money. They say money doesn’t grow on trees, but apparently it flows in your river. It does. Impressive. Anyhow, I don’t think there’s a river or a llama. No, I wish. My llama, it’s a head. You put the head on. Well, it likes to get blown off in the wind, so we have a decapitated llama right now. we’ll put the llama’s head back on. Fortunately, it’s not in a live llama. It’s just a llama constructed of metal and wire and lights. So it’s not nearly as frightening. But so, you know, there’s just not. And so it makes sense. You know, some people, I mean, you know, I know some people who are, you know, make, you know, millions and millions of dollars a year or I’ve met a couple of billionaires and those people, I don’t think they’re really hurting for money. Then there’s the normal folks like the rest of us where I’m like, hey, I have to work each day and each month so that I’ll have enough to pay for life. And, you know, it’s not just going to randomly show up and be like, oh, hey, here, have a million dollars. I’m like, cool. I’ve never had somebody do that. Be like, here, have a million dollars. It’s never happened. Probably never will happen. But the person who’s struggling by all the time may not be the best person to put in charge of your estate. So your mom and dad die, got a house worth $500,000, you’ve got a bank account worth $10,000, got a little bit of money left in the IRA or 401k that’s worth $50,000. So then you take this struggling person who’s always behind on bills and always running a little bit short, and you put them in charge of, hey, we’ll distribute things out. So you add it all up. You’re like, well, we’ve got $500 plus $50 plus this. We’ve got about $600,000. Cool. And the person who’s behind can say, well, you know, I’m about $5,000 behind on my rent or my mortgage. Yeah, I’m going to get a certain percentage of this anyway. I’ll just take some of that money and use it to get caught up. Well, if it’s not their money and they’re just supposed to be getting it to where it’s supposed to go, then that can be considered theft. And we don’t want to put people in a position where they’re tempted to become a thief or commit thievery because someone died. Now, if they move quickly and they’re like, oh, hey. There’s $600,000. I’ve got two siblings. We’re each going to get $200,000. Let me distribute that out quickly. Then I’ll get my money and I can pay it out of my money. That’s great. Because while the money is either in a trust or going through the probate process… that money doesn’t belong to the person who’s in charge of the process, the trustee or the personal representative, but rather the personal representative of the trustee is a fiduciary, which means a person who’s holding onto assets for the use and benefit of somebody else. Now, some of that may be for the use and benefit of themselves if they’re both a personal representative and a trustee and a beneficiary, but that can be a It’s not a legally prohibited conflict. There are some legally prohibited conflicts. There’s always going to be conflicts, and you can’t prevent all conflicts. You can’t prevent all things, and you certainly don’t want to legally prohibit all conflicts. If we legally prohibited all conflicts, I don’t think we could do anything. Because Luke is not in conflict with sending out these words that I’m saying to the rest of the world. But if I said something truly disparaging against Luke, he might be in conflict with that. Lack of llama, lack of flowing money river, understandable. I don’t think anybody has a flowing money river and a whole bunch of Christmas llamas. They’re my people who have real llamas and they either sell them or do something with them. There’s a I grew up in Fort Collins. There’s a right behind up in the mountains. They’ve driven by where people have llama farms. And I’m like, OK, well, that’s what you do. You raise llamas and sell them off. Cool. Good for you. A llama, I think you can shave the llama fur and make blankets. And my wife has some llama fur line slippers. And that doesn’t necessarily harm the llama. It just takes the extra fur off the llama to be used for other things. And perhaps llama-based products are very lucrative. And so there is a flowing river of money. I just drove by the farm. I didn’t check out the whole property to see if there was a flowing river of money. But if I said something truly disparaging against Luke, or I said, hey, Luke, I think maybe I’m going to do this show, and you’re going to have to pay me whatever your salary is for the time I’m doing the show, Luke might not be so keen on that. No, not particularly. No, no? You want to get paid what you actually get paid for what you do in life?

SPEAKER 07 : 17:59

Yes.

SPEAKER 01 : 17:59

Yes, that would be optimal. Craziness. Totally normal rationalness. There we are. That’s the words I was looking for. But, you know, I try not to say things that are too controversial, too anti-Luke, because it seems like a good idea. He’s the one that controls the… all the wonderful equipment that sends my message off into the world. And so for that, well, not just because of that, but I was going to be nice and respectful to Luke anyway, just because it’s the right thing to do, but it gives me extra incentive to be nice and respectful to Luke. Luke is his job to broadcast my words, and he’s going to do it because it’s the right thing to do and because this is the airtime that’s dedicated to me. But I also think that it seems like a nice thing to be respectful to Luke. Luke’s respectful to me. It works out great. It’s called professionalism, right? But we’d all like to think that people are always going to be professional and there’s never going to be conflicts, but that’s not necessarily the case in estate planning. I mean, I have sometimes in an estate plan, I will have people who they do not leave equal amounts to all of their kids for a variety of reasons, whether it’s one child has been staying with them and been the caregiver towards the end of life. And so the parent who doesn’t have a lot of liquid assets says, hey, you’ve been the child who stayed here and taking care of me for the last five to seven years. I didn’t have money to pay you. But instead, when I die, I will leave you the house and not leave the house to your other siblings. And then when you sell the house, you can get paid back for all of the times you’ve taken care of me. Okay, that makes perfect sense. And it seems reasonable and rational right up to the point where the person dies and the other siblings are expecting to get the same amount of everything. And suddenly they find out that the whole house is going to one sibling and they go, wait a minute, that’s not fair. That’s not how we want things. We should challenge this. And so you get a challenge to a will or a challenge to a trust that says, this is unfair and this is not the way it’s supposed to be. And a lot of times we respond. Fair and exactly equal are not the same concept. They’re not exactly the same. Now, we’re not trying to be unfair to you. We’re not trying to be like, ha-ha, sucker, you got cut out. But I can see where people are coming from, where they’d be upset if they thought they were going to get an equal portion to a sibling and then another sibling gets more. And 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. And once again, 720-394-6887. So, I mean, I can see where people are coming from, where they think they’re getting one thing and they get something different and they can be upset about it. Many people who get upset about things don’t necessarily understand the way the law is set up, that when somebody dies, they’re allowed to pick and choose and say where their assets go. And it doesn’t have to be equal portions to the kids. It doesn’t have to be everything to the spouse. Now, there are spousal protection statutes that say, hey, if you try to cut your spouse off completely, then you’re not going to be able to do so. And then we have problems where if you’re trying to cut your spouse off completely, the spouse can say, wait a minute, I was married to them for 30 years. They want to give me nothing. We were married for 30 years. I’m at least entitled to half of it, and the law agrees with them. So there are spousal protection statutes. Oddly enough, there are not. A children protection statute would be if someone were leaving everything in equal portions to their kids, But then they either did not update their will or forgot to add a child, or they had a child after the will was made and didn’t update it to include that child. That child is considered what is called a pretermitted child. And basically, it’s a forgotten child. And that forgotten child, if everything is being, you know, is entitled to the same share as the other children. So let’s say that And we kind of saw an example of this a few years ago when Pat Bolin died in the Denver Broncos. And we had the Bolin kids, and then there was another kid that showed up that said, hey, Pat Bolin was my father. It was a result of an affair here, an outside of marriage relationship, but I am in fact Pat Bolin’s kid. And so there was a claim against Pat Bowen’s estate for the same amount as the other kids. And you go, okay, well, now they have to deal with that. And sometimes if people leave unequal amounts to their kids, there can be questions of were the kids forgotten or were they intentionally excluded? So when I write a will and somebody is being forgotten, getting a little bit less or a lot less or nothing, will write in there that they’re being intentionally excluded. I tend not to write all the reasons. This person’s being intentionally excluded because they were a terrible, horrible child, and they talked back to their parents, and they threw mashed potatoes across the room every Thanksgiving, and because they were… they’re a Republican in a house full of Democrats or a Democrat in a house full of Republicans. I don’t tend to write all of those reasons in there simply because we don’t have to reveal all the reasons and all the reasoning behind why somebody would want that. We just say this person is intentionally excluded. And oftentimes when I do that, we’re like, okay, we’re leaving the house to one of the kids, but the other kids are being taken care of by other means, whether they’re getting IRA money or life insurance money. And so I’ll say, hey, these people are excluded from the will, but they’re being taken care of by other means. Makes sense. Because if you’ve got a will, but you’ve got life insurance or an IRA or a 401k, if the IRA or the 401k or the life insurance have a beneficiary designations, then the money is going to transfer to the named beneficiary. So if you’ve got a house that’s worth $500,000 and then you’ve got a life insurance policy worth $300,000 and you have four kids, say, well, we’re going to leave the house to these three kids and we’ll leave life insurance to somebody else. And then the person who gets the life insurance money, they’ve got the life insurance money, the others to the three kids, and they can sell the house and split up the money, and it’s perfectly fine to do. So there are different approaches. There’s different ways to do things. And when somebody thinks they’re going to get something and then doesn’t, that’s where you see most of the challenges that I see in things. I’ve only had a few that get challenged, and mostly it’s that type of situation, you know. When you have two kids, you’re like, we’re going to split it 50-50. There’s not a whole lot of challenges. People who come like, wait a minute. Mom loved me more. So I should get more than my 50%. You don’t see as many of those challenges as, hey, I got less than what I thought I was going to do. Or I’ve never seen a challenge where a kid goes, well, hey, I got 70%. My siblings only got 30%. I got far too much. I should just give some of it up to my siblings. I’ve never seen that happen, oddly enough. I mean, we don’t necessarily want to. And there’s all sorts of situations why you would leave different amounts, whether it’s when someone was a caregiver or I’ve had it where a couple of siblings are very successfully financially successful. Yeah, there you go. And one was not as financially successful. So when the parents die, they want to give more to the less financially successful one. It’s not that they don’t love the other ones any more or less. They just would prefer to have money go more to their child that needs that money than the one that’s doing very well financially. I had a client once who both of their older children were multimillionaires and have been very successful in what they do. The third child was an elementary school teacher. We all know that elementary school teacher is all about the highest wages for the elementary school teachers. They get paid billions and billions of dollars. Oh, wait, no, they don’t. So… Just to help the elementary school teacher out, the parents were going to leave their money to the elementary school teacher more than to their two other kids who were multimillionaires, which makes sense. And the two who got less knew it was happening, didn’t have any problem with it. But it was explained to them. And sometimes that’s the best way to avoid conflicts is for parents to explain to kids why they’re doing what they’re doing. And the kids may or may not like it. But if you explain, hey, this is why we’re giving more money here or there, it can go a long way to avoiding conflicts and avoiding after somebody’s died. Oh, well, now we have to fight it out and try to guess and figure out what it was that mom or dad wanted to do. So, you know, Christmas and, you know, Christmas time, just lots of families, there can be fighting. So here we’re trying to avoid fighting in our estate plans. So thank you so much for listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on KLZ 560 AM. My phone number, 720-394-6887. Stay tuned for John Rush and Rush Region next, and I will be back next week. Thanks and bye.

SPEAKER 05 : 28:23

Mobile estate planning with Michael Bailey will return to ATX next Wednesday at 2.30 here on KLZ 560, AM 560, FM 100.7, and online at klzradio.com.

SPEAKER 02 : 28:36

The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ Management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.

SPEAKER 04 : 28:52

Rush to Reason with John Rush is coming up next on KLZ 560.

SPEAKER 03 : 28:59

Is your office ready for a new copier? Business Equipment Service has you covered. Whether you’re a small business or a large corporation, Business Equipment Service has current model Konica Minolta and Canon copiers on sale right now. Our models have very minimal usage at a fraction of the cost of buying new. We stand behind our equipment with a 90-day parts and labor warranty, as well as a one-year or 100,000-page performance warranty. giving you the reliability you need to keep things running smoothly. Right now, get free delivery and installation when you mention this ad. Why choose us? Aside from saving thousands on high-performance copiers, we have lease options starting at $100 per month, we service and supply what we sell, we offer full service maintenance plans, fast on-site service, and remote support. For over 20 years, Business Equipment Service has helped hundreds of Colorado businesses find affordable, reliable office solutions. Visit us at besofcolorado.com or call 303-825-5664.

SPEAKER 06 : 30:00

John Rusher on the next Rush to Reason. It’s Health and Wellness Wednesday. Feeling like everyone around you is getting sick? This winter’s flu season is already off to a rough start, but health educator Troy Duell says a few simple daily habits can help you dodge the germs and keep your energy up. Richard Battle, how we become Americans instead of Americants today.