0:00 rabbi kevin i've been on television numerous times been interviewed uh everywhere and this is the first time i've had cocktails brought to me by the interview host so what would you say are let's i'll pick kind of three the three most important factors someone should consider or a couple should consider as their you know working on their their estate plan who are you and where are you going what do you want together we'll find the ideal path on the way to wow show with your host
0:36 kevin bemel we tend to think about finances as being our job or our business one of the overlooked areas is what happens with our money after we die and so on this episode of the way to wow show i've asked my friend jeff condon who's a trust and estate planning attorney to come in and talk to us about that so we can at least get some kind of idea about what we ought to be thinking in that particular aspect of the realm of
1:12 finances but before we do that i'm going to talk to our bartender hendo and he's going to mix up a cocktail so what what do you got planned here kevin we're going to be making an el matador uh this is a fantastic liquor ford uh cocktail that involves uh some curacao dry vermouth and tequila oh okay oh wow that's sort of a weird martini almost yeah it's kind of like one of those three kind of uh element cocktails that you got like your negronis your boulevardiers and all that sort of stuff so do you like any of those kind of drinks so it's kind of licorice yeah yeah
1:47 absolutely yeah love them love them all but but you know i'm not a good judge because i'll drink anything and that's what i like about your mate that's wonderful so there's going to be two of you correct yes uh-huh all right so we're going to do two ounces of each so we've got some curacao right there so we've got two ounces of that green and what is your favorite drink mate boy you know it really depends on the mood i mean sometimes there's nothing that'll be just a traditional martini other times like if i'm just making dinner i'll have a you know whiskey and soda but then you know some of the things that the bartenders on the show have
2:22 come up with i never would have ever thought to i mean the first time i had a negroni was was was on the show what was it yeah we've had actually two or three different kind of riffs on negroni's they've all been great um um do you know if you know diane quinones she made one with uh with mezcal really that was really fantastic so i like making one uh it's called a reagan's negroni and you do it with instead of campari you're going to be doing it with um jagermeister oh and because it's all herbal basically and that is the correct way to say it herbal because there's an h in the word um there's uh it brings it
3:00 all out it lets it breathe where campari have always found a bit one note so uh it's a nice way to kind of make it breathe more so if you ever if you're ever in a pub they've got tons of jager that no one's touching since the early 2000s so please go and have a regan's negroni it's named after regan from the uh the orange bitters if you know uh your your bitters oh sure sure and uh but this one this one was fantastic because i always wanted a kind of a white liquor based three ingredient cocktail and i discovered this one and i think it's a lot of fun uh and we met a long time ago at lost
3:37 property didn't we oh that's right that's right oh my gosh where i hang out with your friend michael still that's right yeah yeah yeah yeah i haven't been there for quite some time oh we've missed you yeah yeah start coming back exactly well we're all open up and it's uh be a lot of fun to see you again i know michael's uh making a regular patronage today oh good good well he's holding up the side he really is so although your your interesting conversations that you guys have in depth you know always wonderful to see you guys debate the meanings of the universe and whatnot thank you yeah we i'm not sure we've
4:13 we've uh actually solved any problems yet but uh you know we like to think we have and of course with you know your libations uh loosening them up loosing us loosening us up exactly i like to know more than i am right now how many negroni's in are we today uh no you know we're just starting off just starting off it's just kicking off so well that's what we tell them to the camera isn't it yes they don't have to know truth nor the sirens that's just immigration coming for me there we go there we are don't take him until after the shot's
4:48 done leave me alone so i made it myself all right there we go all yours mate excellent these are for you the el matador or el matador the matador right el matador matador thank you so much thank you well isn't this nice yeah so hendo made these for me this is this is an el matador and uh you know i'm usually not afraid of a cocktail but
5:23 i you know this could this could be an adventure rabbi kevin i've been on television numerous times been interviewed uh everywhere and this is the first time i've had cocktails brought to me by the interview host so this is not only a novel experience because of the setting that we're in right now which is terrific but that i'm getting alcohol too well this is just the best day ever well there you go thank you so much so cheers cheers right yeah just a little sip yeah refreshing huh nice gosh that is
5:58 nice well hello hello hello hello hello you know i think we've known each other a long long time but haven't i haven't seen you in years well you know as members of the tribe we all know each other well that's that's you know we're just you know instead of hello nice to meet you it's hello nice to see you again right nice to see you again right so i'm going to read a short biography about you so so the folks know who you are and we'll have a little chat sounds good jeff condon has practiced trust and estates law for over 32 years in santa monica kind of a sitting right next door to los
6:34 angeles where he was born and raised correct native native native to although i was born in whittier i was born in east l.a watch yourself [Laughter] oh you you can afterwards you could buy me a burrito at el tipiak and have the holland back that's the big burrito they have that's very well known yes okay there you go you just no actually that's an east l.a thing oh well see i've been there a long long time right he has written over a hundred articles
7:10 on the subject of of trust in a state law spoken on 70 radio call-in shows and at 300 talks and seminars throughout the country that's that's that's impressive to say the least i like to hear myself talk okay you know his first book beyond the grave the right way and the wrong way of leaving money to your children and others was published in 1996 updated twice since then in which the wall street journal called quote the best estate planning book in america unquote is the best-selling inheritance-related book in american publishing history
7:47 by far on a personal note jeff is an avid swimmer who use among who uses among other things the culver city plunge i have a buddy who swims there all the time it's just down the street from us here in our our our new studio location in culver city and you are engaged to the lovely kimberly classkin that is correct and uh as i step out the front door of this storefront and i look to the left i can see our wedding site for uh may of next year it's at the culver hotel oh beautiful oh that's a great venue she likes art deco
8:23 she has a woman with good taste she likes art deco and you uh i won't argue with you there yeah be careful as a rabbi i can claim to have a direct line to god i'm not saying i do but i can claim it more so than anybody else walking on walking around i'm not so sure but anyway but thank you but of course so so why should we be worried about estate planning you know that's a good question because a lot of people are not some people will just you know uh what's the term befall this mortal
9:00 coil and not have any plan at all uh that they've created during their lifetime to direct who gets what when they die and how they get it and that's fine that's just one way to roll but the thing is this when you don't set forth your inheritance instructions in a will or living trust most of these days it's a living trust you don't have your instructions set forth a lot of people don't realize that the law sets up those instructions for you
9:35 by not making a decision you've made a decision and that this even inadvertently and that decision is that you've allowed the law whatever's in the california statutes dictate who gets what on your death and the law doesn't know what you have in mind so if you're married to a second wife and you have three children from your first marriage and then you die but in your intention was that you would like to have most of your assets go to your children from your first marriage
10:10 well no they have to share a significant portion with your second wife so it's important to have a plan that dictates your instructions as to what you want to happen with your stuff your real estate your bank assets brokerage assets pedigreed dogs and cats whatever you have to your children and other heirs your spouses your grandchildren your charities but in a way that doesn't create conflict and divisiveness between your family members after you
10:46 die okay um i think we jews have a saying and that saying is that one of the the great lessons that we want to teach our children is to do no harm and you do harm to your children and they learn that harm has been done if you leave your assets into your to them in a way that creates conflict and chaos and jealousies between them you know it's it it's interesting what you're saying so when i was still in the real estate business what seems like you know another a lifetime ago i worked for a conservator and one of
11:21 their clients was an elderly woman and she had a house and she had a bunch of securities and the way her will was set up was once one child was going to get the house and the other was going to get the securities all the cash was spent supporting her and now the the conservator needed more money for her because she was still alive and the children were fighting over whether the house got sold or whether the securities got sold because whichever one got sold the other one was getting zero that's and she wasn't even dead yet and
11:56 they were fighting over the assets yeah that's that's that's a poor plan that's uh dying with a bad plan or living with a bad plan the fact that in that scenario it sounds like to me that that the inheritance instrument said certain assets to a certain assets to b that's right that's exactly what it said but if asset if the assets going to a is not there are not there at the time of the death of that lady of the client then those children have been cut out of an inheritance and now they may put pressure on their siblings to part with
12:32 their share because it's not fair and this is the the most if there's a greatest hit about how to do no harm in an inheritance plan is to be sure that it's structured in a way that it treats everybody fairly and takes into account the fact that if you leave certain assets to certain children uh what happens if those if those certain assets are not around at the time of the death of that uh of that client so um you do have these situations where
13:10 like you said there there is nothing around for those certain children and that's life in the big city for them because the plan obviously wasn't done that well right so you have to take all these factors into account so what would you say are let's i'll pick kind of three the three most important factors someone should consider or a couple should consider as their you know working on their their estate plan okay um you know i've talked about this for so many years and in so many different contexts but
13:46 and there's you know a billion issues to deal with and you know uh uh when we wrote these books you know it took us years to write because we had to condense them all into life's lessons that people could not only uh understand but hopefully enjoy because you know quite frankly you know this can be a very boring topic you know i mean to talk you know here you know is about death and taxes and all that but uh but i'd like to uh to think that i can distill this down into some core essence lessons and you've asked me about that and the
14:21 first one and i've alluded to before is you want to be sure that the inheritance plan that you have that mom and dad have does no harm between their kids how do you do harm well if you if their children are not treated financially fairly in the inheritance plan now maybe that's sometimes pretty easy to do you just simply say hey mom and dad have three kids leave everything to them equally boom boom boom done jeff move on what's what you know what else is there to talk about well there are ways that mom and dad can inadvertently create financial
14:56 unfairness between the kids the most common way is if mom and dad treated the children financially unfairly during their lives during mom and dad's lives and then they go ahead and have a plan that leaves everything to them equally well from the parents point of view they're just doing their thing they're leaving everything equal okay but from the kids point of view it's unequal because during mom and dad's lifetime they got unequal shares of of uh unequal gifts so maybe uh dr
15:33 david who went to stanford under uh stanford undergraduate and stanford medical school got 250 000 whereas one sibling got five thousand dollars and another sibling didn't get anything those gifts even though one would say they have nothing to do with the inheritance plan they do because it's relevant to the children now when mom and dad are making a gift to a child they're not thinking about you know keeping track keeping score they're just trying to help a child when that child needs help right but the ones who are keeping a scorecard
16:08 are the children now this is something that you know they don't teach you in law school this is not something we recognize on the first day of our estate planning practice this is the thing that comes up after clients die and we had no idea that would transpire until we saw the reality of money uh impacted on a on the children and this is something that we didn't think was relevant but it absolutely is so my job is to point out is is to ask the question to the parents hey have you given substantially more to any of your kids
16:44 during their life during your lifetime uh no that's fine yes okay let's talk about it and let's see if you want to equalize give them the choice we explain to them the potential consequences of upheaval between the kids because they're going to put pressure on each other to equalize and you know what do you think the child who got more during a lifetime is going to say you know as he you know freezes out his siblings and the once close relationship between the siblings is never more and not only do the kids not talk to each other but the grandkids don't talk to each other and they have no idea why so the point is
17:19 we recognize the issue and then we can try to resolve the problem i know we don't have enough time to talk about all the solutions but recognizing the problem is 95 of that problem solution um that's so think about all of the lifetime gifts that you've made to your kids and see if this is something that you feel could arise after you death to um to put your children in a in a world of conflict and chaos another another way that your inheritance plan can be written so
17:55 that it does no harm the mom and dad come in we say make sure you account for all loans that you made to your children during your lifetime because if you have mom and dad have two kids and everything goes to them equally but during the lifetime dad and mom they made a 50 000 loan to their son didn't make a similar loan to their daughter and now when both mom and dad die when everything goes to those two kids in equal shares everything includes the note and the obligation
18:30 that's supposedly due so now you not only have a sibling relationship between these two kids of course it's siblings but you have a money relationship you have one child who is a debtor to the other child because now that debtor child has to repay half that loan plus the uh the interest and penalties and compound or whatever to the other child and that child is not going to let the debtor child slide and you know most of the time so that could you know you know what hey you can't enforce that loan against me it's been 20 years the statute of limitations is uh has run and then but we're not talking
19:06 courtroom justice here we're talking family justice and that that family justice has been breached and another way oh so again recognize the issue and come up with ways in the inheritance plan to resolve it there are ways and i would say the third thing that you should have in your inheritance plan that does no harm to your to your children is it's not just not just treat your children financially fairly but also give them the power equally to and what i'm talking about
19:41 is naming all of your children as your after death agents to carry out the inheritance instructions in a living trust those after death agents are called successor trustees if it's a will it's co-executors but no not too many people use wills these days so you want a name if you have three kids name all of them to be the delivery boys to carry out these instructions because if mom and dad like a lot of folks say well too many cooks spoil the broth so i'm just gonna pick one of them or you know the other two they're on the other side of the country or ones you
20:16 know in the peace corps in new guinea and one's more qualified than the others man they wouldn't know anything about money to save their lives so i'm just going to name one and the other two you know we're just you know forget it you know they you know they'll get their share and that's the conventional thinking and that's what we used to think until we saw what happened after both mom and dad died and what we saw was the out-of-power siblings making the life of the empowered sibling completely miserable with questions of where's our share you know uh why haven't you given us a call we haven't heard anything and in a vacuum there's suspicion
20:52 um and and that in control sibling that that that sole trustee sibling has a lot of power the power to decide what each of their shares will consist of what attorneys are going to be used what cpas are going to use you know it can get into a real storm of of conflict that leads ultimately to court even if there's no there there and i've seen more families break up over this one issue than anything else so if anybody's going to walk away from this uh you know from this uh this this broke this program i would say if you have a living trust
21:28 that names just one out of your children to be the after death agent you should really have that amended to name them all unless you have a really really good reason that you can sell me on you know maybe you've got 12 kids that's a lot maybe one kid's on drugs maybe you haven't seen one kid in 20 years you know i talk a lot in sweeping generalizations but there's always exceptions so do no harm in your inheritance plan is the numero uno lesson that i would like to convey and i think i hopefully have conveyed to your viewers today so unfortunately we're out of time but
22:04 and i think we've really only scratched the surface but you know when i when i talk to guests i say you know let's let's have a central idea that viewers can take away and and yours really captured that you know the idea of do no harm we think of that in terms of doctors but i think it applies in a lot of areas of life and the idea of in your estate plan in the transfer of your assets after death the first thing to consider is do no harm what are all the ways that can happen and try to avoid them exactly to protect and preserve the family in the
22:39 inheritance arena is a most worthy and uh important goal jeff thank you so much for joining me today my pleasure right by kevin thank you so much jeff condon came on the show to talk about finances but i think he brought a whole new perspective to it we think of money as being its own little world but it affects our relationships our family our friends especially after we die what we do with our money says things to people
23:15 that we may not have ever intended so all the pillars of the three pillars of achievement work together let's remember jeff's central piece of advice do no harm for those of you who remember the original star trek show that message probably resonates with you it bears repeating let's do no harm with our estate planning with our lives in general courage at all times my friends marie you're still my bell
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