Join Michael Bailey, the Mobile Estate Planner, as he discusses the essential aspects of estate planning. In this episode, Michael explores the unique needs of individuals when it comes to wills and trusts, debunking the myth of one-size-fits-all solutions. As someone who travels to meet clients’ needs, Michael provides tailored advice to ensure your estate plan fits your life and goals.
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 02 :
All right, good afternoon. Welcome to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey. So we can do something besides just leave your family alone. You are listening to KLZ 560 AM, 100.7 FM, possibly on the KLZ 560 radio app. Or also, if you’re Luke, you get to listen on the other side of the glass. Well, also, I mean, I guess he gets to hear it first. But then Luke gets to be, you know, sending this all out to the wonderful world. Now, as I look out the window here, I can see less of the wonderful world than I normally can. Because there’s a snowy, foggy haze. Because it’s snowing! Yay! Luke asked if I had trouble getting into the show today. I’m like, no, actually I didn’t. It worked out pretty well. I dropped my son off at school this morning. Then came down. I had an appointment in Aurora. But I needed an internet connection. So I… Took a two-minute detour and stopped by the office at about 8.45 this morning. So I was out in the pool of cubicles, the cubicle pool, and could send a couple of emails out to people who needed to see things and all that kind of stuff. Um, but, uh, you know, so, and you know, the, the roads that I have been on so far have been kind of more wet and maybe a little bit slushy rather than, you know, actually being slippery and icy. Now I think as we go overnight and the temperature drops and it does freeze over, then tomorrow morning might be kind of icy for a commute and that could be on fun and, and such things. But, you know, that’s just, you know, that’s a problem for tomorrow morning. Right now we’re doing okay. But I also came, when I got back from my Thanksgiving break, I had a, there was some mail for me at the office because there’s, you know, you take a whole week off. It’s amazing how mail piles up. And so I went to get my mail and there were several boxes there from Amazon. I’m like, hey, anytime you get an Amazon box, it’s super exciting, right? And Well, my Amazon boxes this time contained my author copies of the book that I’ve written called The Mobile Estate Planner, subtitled Michael’s Practical Guide to Estate Planning in Colorado. And then there’s a picture of me on the front. There’s a picture of me on the back, actually. The picture of me on the back. Luke, do you recognize this picture of me on the back and where it is located? I do. Where is that? Where was that picture taken? That is in our lovely studios here. Probably sitting in the exact same chair in the exact same studio that I’m sitting in, huh? Wearing the same set of headphones in front of the same microphone, I’d reckon. Is it the same set of headphones? It might be a different set of headphones. They get switched out from time to time.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, very true.
SPEAKER 02 :
Same microphone, though. That’s probably… Same handsome smile. I’m guessing that’s a different suit and a different tie, though. Just doesn’t look like the one that I’m wearing today. Today I have my snowmen with a Santa hat on tie. So, you know, it’s a good thing. But so I’ve combined, you know, I ended up writing a book and it was published on Amazon. So you can go find it. I got Mr. Luke a copy of his own, of his very own. Now it’s personalized. So we know that it’s Luke’s copy and not somebody else’s copy. You know, I wrote him a note and signed it because now apparently I’m, I don’t know that I’m actually famous. You’re famous to me. I’m KLZ from 2.30 to 3 on Wednesday famous, right? I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I think it’s a good thing, but I can’t be sure. I mean, your business is booming, so I’d say it’s going well so far. There is that. And we do have KLZ, at least partially, to thank for that. Yeah. have a much larger reach of people that I can talk to on the radio than just one-on-one. Although, you know, when I do talk to people one-on-one, I’m happy to do so. And that’s, I mean, that sentence right there, like that’s kind of an interesting thing because you get estate planning, which is, you know, everybody needs to do it. There’s general rules that need to apply to do it. There’s all of those things that go into it. but estate planning is also a one-on-one type of thing. It’s, it’s, it, yes, it complies with the rules, but it’s also one of one because everybody is one of one. And I think about that sometime, you know, and I’m driving and I’m like, okay, I don’t really necessarily count up how many different kinds of kinds of cars I see in a day, but you know, I’m like, okay, well, there’s a, there’s a Toyota and there’s a Honda and there’s a Lexus and there’s a Nissan. And Sometimes there’s an Infiniti, and every once in a while we’ll run into a Maserati. Maseratis are more expensive, so they’re less prevalent. But then there’s Ford and Chrysler and all of the different cars out there. Cars are mostly mass-produced at this point. You know, leather seats or cloth seats or, I don’t know, does anybody still do vinyl seats? I don’t know. Maybe that was, like, from the 70s where it would get really hot, and then you feel like you’re stuck to the seat, especially if you’re wearing shorts in the summer. You have to, like, peel yourself off the seat, or you’ve never experienced that, Luke. I’ve been lucky enough to avoid that fate. Show off. Anyhow. sometimes you know it just seemed like a really good idea you’re like yeah that might not have been the best of ideas you know and so uh but and so you’ve got all you know these cars and you know and everybody wants their car to be you know i mean sometimes you watch a car commercial and it’s Like, oh, you know, if you drive this type of car, you will be one with the road and you can feel like you can enjoy the driving experience. If you try this type of car, then you can be one with nature and you can tame nature. And I’m like, well, I don’t think that most or at least most of the places that I go. So like if I’m up in Rocky Mountain National Park or out on the Pawnee National Grasslands or even in some of the other campsites around, you know, up in the mountains. Most of those areas are not going to let me just drive my car across the meadow or through the woods like they seem to do in car commercials. You’ve got the rugged off-road experience of, insert your car company here. And I’m like, I don’t think that the folks in Rocky Mountain National Park would really be thrilled if I started to drive my daughter’s Acura MDX, you know, that has four-wheel drive. If I just tried to drive that up one of the 14ers, I don’t, you know, without a road, I’m just going to go through the woods and on the rocks. I don’t think that the government and the authorities would view that as a positive thing. And, you know, I’d love to, you know, I see every once in a while, I’ve seen like two or three different Maseratis around the Denver area. Like, yeah, it would be great to have a Maserati on like I-25 or I-70 when there’s nobody else on the road because then I can go fast and you can zip through and, you know, drive around. But then there was driving on I-70 this morning in the snow. We were going somewhere between 8 and 16 miles an hour. not just because of the snow, but because there were lots of cars. And I’m like, well, it’s hard to, you know, if you’re in a car that’s built for speed, you know, I have a, I have a friend who bought one of the like the 2024 Corvette. He’s super excited about being a driver as fast as he wanted. And he’s, he had to find a, kind of unused stretch of country road type of thing where he could, you know, see how fast he could get going. Because if you try to drive amongst traffic, it doesn’t work. So cars, as much as that, you know, we do have our personalized car, you know, my, my daughter’s car, she took and she put a little window decal on the back that says, I hope something good happens to you today, which totally encapsulates the way that my daughter views the world. She’s like, yep, I hope something great happens to you today. She wants everybody to be happy. She wants wonderful things to happen to people. Which is an admirable thing. You know, I don’t necessarily have that on the back of my car, but I don’t have any window decals on the back of my car, mostly because it’s just a car and I’d like to be able to see out the back windshield. And so I’m not that excited about it. But… You know, she likes her car, she’s glad it’s her car, she’s personalized it to her, but it is just a car. And so, you know, same thing, you know, your car is your car, it’s a one-of-one car to you, but it also kind of fits in the mass of everything. 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 I’ve heard of the phenomenon of what some attorneys refer to as trust mills, where you’ve got an attorney and everybody they meet needs a trust and everybody they meet gets a trust and every trust they do has certain provisions and ways that they do things. And so that’s just kind of how they do things. They go through, they mass produce trusts and go bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And everything’s good and everything’s the way it needs to be. Except that I don’t necessarily operate that way because I don’t think that everybody needs a trust. And I don’t think that just because I could write a trust for everybody that that would be the best thing for them. I don’t want to. I don’t think everybody needs to incur the cost of a trust. I don’t think everybody needs to incur the… the time of getting assets into a trust I mean for people who a trust is useful and helpful for it’s very useful and very helpful and there’s lots of different types of trusts out there I’ve had people who yeah I write trusts for people who need um who are trying to avoid the probate process. Usually the asset protection trusts that I write are specifically for people who are looking at possibly going into long-term care at some point. So they want to protect their assets from long-term care. There are types of trusts and things that are out there to provide protection from lawsuits. So if somebody is going to have a business and maybe it’s a risky business maybe it’s a trucking business and you live in say Alaska your trucking business is featured on the history show Ice Road Truckers where they’re literally driving their trucks across lakes that are frozen over and sometimes they’re not frozen over enough and the trucks go down and things like that. That might be a slightly more risky business than hey I sell flowers to people who want to make their wives or girlfriends happy. So we sell flowers. Flowers tend to be a little bit less on the we could get sued over something, then you’re a trucking company with a big trucker that’s, you know, loses control on the freeway and crashes into somebody or something. So, you know, for people who have slightly riskier things that they do or slightly riskier businesses, you know, sometimes they like to set up corporate structures or legal structures that are set up to try to insulate from liability. Now, there’s certain things that you can’t just say like, oh, well, you know, no matter what I do, I, nobody can ever touch anything that I ever own. You know, part of the point of being alive is that sometimes, you know, you interact with people and it doesn’t always go perfectly or well. You know, I like to think that I get along well with most people, and I like to think that I’m a pretty decent driver, but I’ve also been involved in a couple of car crashes, and I’ve been involved in, I mean, I guess I’ve been involved in some people crashes too, so like when you’re shopping at a, You’re out Christmas shopping, and you’re in a busy store or walking down the hallways of a mall, and sometimes there’s just a whole mass of people, and you bump into each other. Well, when you’re involved in a people crash, there’s usually not a whole lot of damage that goes on there. If I were walking down the hallway and I ran into Luke, I’d be like, oh, sorry, excuse me. And Luke would probably be like, hey, didn’t see you there. And then we’d move on. But if Luke and I were driving a car and we crashed into each other, there might be things on the car that would bend or break or dent or scratch or something like that. And then we would have to talk to one another and figure out how to get it fixed. And it’s part of why, you know, sometimes there’s blame assigned. You know, they’re called accidents for a reason. But, you know, there’s blame assigned. And, you know, so I’ve never had, I mean, I’ve been in a car accident, you know, where, you know, just kind of happened, you know. Possibly even one was my fault, you know. But, you know, I don’t necessarily, you know, live my life going, oh, my gosh. It’s possible I’m going to get sued. I need to hide and protect everything. I don’t exactly engage in risky business. I’m like, well, hey, what do you want to do with your stuff when you die? Let’s put it somewhere and make sure it goes where you want it to. But even then, sometimes people get – they have certain expectations or certain things that they want to have happen. And if it doesn’t go exactly the way they want, then – you know, they look for somebody to blame and, you know, I may be on that list, but I’m just because of the way that my law practice has gone. I don’t do a lot of, um, I don’t do a lot of asset protection or trying to protect from lawsuits and things like that. I have friends who do that. I have friends who are attorneys who do that. That’s kind of what they base their entire practice on. I actually have one friend who he sets up Asset protection trusts under the law of the Cook Islands. And so you’re a U.S.-based person, but you can set up a Cook Island trust, and there’s apparently all sorts of cool protections and asset protection things, and those all come at a cost. They’re not cheap. But that’s what’s out there impossible to do. It’s just if somebody needs that type of protection, I’m more than willing to refer them to my friends who do that just because I don’t do everything. And, you know, I think we kind of understand that. But, you know, someone who comes to me and I’m like, okay, well, we can write a trust so that we can control the money after you pass away and dole it out to your kids. So they don’t get it all at once, but over, you know, do it over time and, you know, slowly release it so that they’re going to be much more likely to succeed in what they’re doing and how they’re handling things. You know, we set that up and that’s cool. We can do that for someone who just needs a will. We say, okay, we’ll get your assets to your kids or to whomever you want. It goes through the probate process so you can interface with the courts. It’s all right. And we’ll get that taken care of. For people who want, well, gee, I mean, I’ve heard it referred to online as like, oh, this is my bulletproof way of doing this. I’m like. I don’t have anything that’s bulletproof. I mean, I imagine if I printed out enough paper pages, pieces of paper and had it in front of me that then it would stop an actual bullet from hitting me. Cause it would just stop in the paper. But you know, like that’s kind of more of a marketing strategy rather than a. Um, you know, some people, when someone’s like, well, I want a bulletproof trust. I’m like, well, you need to go to this attorney and that attorney, cause that’s what they call their things as bulletproof trust. Well, can’t you just write me one? I’m like, no, I, I do things a little bit differently than they do. And you know, I, I don’t do everything. I actually had somebody asked me this morning if I do charitable trusts and I said, well, what are we talking about? Are we talking about a trust that will benefit charity now or benefit charity when you die? Or are you trying to get some sort of tax break so that, because there are types of trusts where you put assets into trust with a charity being the final beneficiary, but then you get credit for a certain amount of charitable donation now to reduce your taxes. I’m like, I know of them. I don’t really prepare them. I have friends who do, and I could certainly refer you to the friends who do that. It’s just not part of what I do. And they’re like, okay. And my friend was like, okay, well, thanks. And, you know, they may want a referral in the future to do that. So even though the estate planning rules are all the same, not everybody’s needs are the same. So you can’t just say, oh, well, everybody needs this solution or everybody needs that solution. Does everybody need a will or a trust? Yes. You know, I mean, I think everybody should have a will. If you want to trust on top of that, great. If you don’t, then we don’t need to do it. You don’t need to go to the time and the expense. But, I mean, my wills are a certain price. Trusts are usually more just because we’re doing the work on the front end instead of pushing it off to the person on the back end. If you’re trying to do trusts that… protect your assets from lawsuits or even for people who have more than $15 million for an individual or $30 million for a couple. People were trying to protect money from estate tax. There’s other types of trusts where you can put things and move things and do all sorts of cool stuff to… and try to pay as little estate tax as possible. I mean, most people I meet don’t have more than $30 million because that’s a pretty high number. You know, if it was like, oh, do you have more than $300,000? I’m like, well, pretty much anybody I know who owns a house in Denver has more than $300,000 worth of assets just because real estate’s valuable. But not everybody needs the exact same thing. And 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 once again, that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. And once again, 720-394-6887. So because of the way that things work and how it all goes, sometimes you don’t necessarily have you don’t need the exact same thing. And since you don’t need the exact same thing, you know, it’s everybody needs an estate plan. Yes. But an estate plan doesn’t look exactly the same for everybody. And, you know, so my, my friends who do estate tax planning, you know, somebody comes in, they’re like, Oh yes, I’ve, you know, I’m, I’ve started a business and now I’m worth $240 million. I’m like, well, cool. That’s a, Good for you. I wish I had $240 million. I do not. You know, maybe $240 on a good day. Sure. But $240 million, you know, anything above and beyond the $30 million mark is going to be subject to estate tax and, you know, 50% estate tax rate. So now if you’ve got $100 million there, like, do you really want to pay $50 million to the IRS when you die? Or, you know, some of my friends are like, oh, well, you know, we can do a $25,000, $30,000, $40,000 estate plan where they can move things around and use all the legal maneuverings and everything so that you don’t end up paying the full $50 million in estate tax. Let’s say that they can reduce that down so you only have to pay… $10 million estate tax. So if they’re going to save you $40 million in estate taxes and they’re going to charge you $40,000 for it, that’s a pretty good deal. You know, like, hey, if I give you $40,000, you’ll get $40 million richer. You’re like, yeah, I can spend $40,000 to make $40 million. That’s a pretty good return on investment, I think. I don’t, I mean, it’s not like they’re just going to give you an extra $40 million. It’s, well, when you die, you can pass $40 million more on to your kids than to the IRS. Because we all know that the IRS is everybody’s favorite beneficiary. Everybody really wants to leave the IRS as a beneficiary of their estate plan. And, you know, I mean, nobody really is excited about paying taxes. I’m like, I’m happy to pay taxes on income that I earn because it means that I had a chance to earn the income. And then I have money to live off of. But every time that I pay tax, I’m like, yeah, I’m not quite as thrilled about paying the taxes. I’m about having earned the money to be able to pay the tax. But I think it’s nice that I have earned enough money that I can pay tax. So it works out well there. But still, I’m not, you know, when I pass away, I would rather give my assets back. go to my children or to my wife or to my children rather than to the IRS. Nothing against the IRS. I just like my wife and children a lot, and I don’t have any special affinity or disinfinity for the IRS. But one of the things that, you know, it’s now been several years since the SECURE Act was passed, But the SECURE Act changed the rules on retirement accounts and how they’re taxed when somebody dies. It used to be that you could take your assets, and if they were in an IRA or a 401K, you could roll those into a stretch IRA that would stretch out over the lifetime of the beneficiary. So like if I have an IRA or a 401k and I die and I pass those assets on to my wife, she can stretch it out over her lifetime. And that’s still allowed. It used to be allowed that when you died, you could pass it on to your kids and then stretch it out over the kid’s lifetime. So if I live to be 80 and then I die and I have a million dollars in my retirement accounts, I’m like, well, I’m going to pass it on to my kids when my kids are in their fifties or sixties, but they can stretch that billion dollars out over their lifetime of the next expected lifetime, the next 30 years. Well, if they only live 15 years and then die, then they can pass it on to their kids and stretch it out another 15, 20 years. So you’re just kind of always kicking the can down the road of paying the tax. One of the changes the SECURE Act said is, well, yeah, you can still stretch it out, but it’s over a maximum of 10 years, and you have to pay it out over those 10 years so that that money gets taxed. And so it was a way that the IRS could start getting money from IRAs and 401ks instead of kind of having to be passed down the line in perpetuity, so to speak. And, you know, so that’s just one of the tax things you need to look at. Now, there’s lots of people like, oh, well, you know, I need to put my assets in a trust because then you don’t have to pay any tax on them. I’m like, well, let’s talk about that. The transfer from you to the trust is probably a gift. So if you’re giving away less than $15 million as an individual or $30 million as a couple, then yes, you’re not going to owe tax on that. But if those assets are then income producing, as they produce income, they’re still going to be taxed and trusts are actually taxed. They hit a much higher tax rate a lot quicker than individuals do. And so, I mean, if you put non-income producing assets, sure, that’s fine. If you put income producing assets, it makes a difference. So as you’re going through and looking, and, you know, a lot of people will be like, oh, you know, I need to pass everything on to my kids with the least amount of tax as possible. I’m like, okay, do you have more than $50 million? They’re like, well, no. I’m like, cool. Then you won’t be subject to estate tax. They’re like, oh, really? I’m like, yep. You know, somehow. Maybe people are remembering the rules from several years ago where there was a $500,000 estate tax limit or $750,000 or $1 million. And now that it’s $15 million, it’s less likely that people will reach that number. But so estate, so planning for estate taxes is less of a thing now than it may have been in the past when the rates were lower. Because like I said, most people I know don’t have more than $30 million or 15 million if they’re just an individual. so they can pass their assets on without being subject to estate tax. But your own plan, your individualized plan that accounts for taxes, your family situation, and what you need, that’s what you want to do is have that personalization so that it fits within the proper framework of estate planning and the proper laws, but it works for you the way that you want it to. So thank you so much for listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on 560 KLZ AM, 100.7 FM. John Rush and Rush Reason up next, so stay tuned, and I will talk to you next week. Thanks and bye.
SPEAKER 01 :
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.
