0:00 to trust and Estates weekly I'm your host Kevin bemel and we're here every Monday morning at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time and in deference to Our Guest uh Jennifer at uh let's see it's got to be what noon Central Time right there you go and we talk about all things related to estate planning the administration of trusts and probates both from your own St both from standpoint of doing your own estate planning as well as uh for professionals who are involved in this
0:35 area or are considering becoming involved in Estate Planning and and and Trust in estate uh Administration so my my guest today is all the way from St Louis Missouri I was telling her that's where my dad was born is Jennifer Belmont Jennings she's with MGD law and Jennifer has um a a a a varied background and so you know rather than me um you know going into a long elaborate thing I'm I'm gonna um ask you
1:12 know have Jennifer talk a little bit about her background first so you can see just how um much she brings to the table um in her practice and then we'll we we'll kind of move onone for there so Jennifer thanks for coming on the show I really appreciate it well thank you for having me yeah so share a little I I you know on your on your LinkedIn profile I I've read your background share a little bit about some of the the the um you know professional activities you've been involved in in addition to uh you know now being a lawyer sure so I was a
1:48 financial crisis law school grad so anyone who's in this field from back then that just says all that needs to be said and so I think my path has been a little bit different than I anticipated with when I started law school but you know I started out uh when I earlier in my career doing Estate Planning and family law and then I needed to make a change for a lot of reasons you could read about some of that in womenin law discovering the true meaning of success a book I contributed to and and so got into the financial services for a while for almost 10 years and obtained the certified financial planner designation
2:25 um and then just through series of events I ended up you know making a change and and back in the estate planning area and ended up at a in a great Boutique Law Firm filled with wonderful you know lawyers and so I am focusing primarily on estate planning tax you know uh helping people with that but also bringing in some of the financial planning you know background that we have because everything is very interrelated you know everything with your tax your Investments financial planning your estate planning that's all
3:00 really intertwined and so I'm not doing anything investment related anything like that where I have to you know maintain like registration with the the state on that kind of thing but really trying to use a lot of the knowledge and experience that I gained back in the financial planning world and trying to help you know merge those parts of people's lives together as we you know create and then Implement their estate plans so and I think it's it's important to note this really distinguishes you from a lot of lawyers in this field because although you as as you mentioned you don't you know do the actual you
3:37 know wealth management having been in that industry I I I suspect you understand it quite thoroughly and and at a level that many attorneys may not I like to think so so I can say it you don't you don't have you know you you may want to be modest but I don't have to be for you no I think a lot of things come up and it has already been very helpful to know like oh that that particular brokerage firm they're not going to like this this is how we have to approach it this is probably what their documents say you know in that account agreement these are the ways we need to navigate this or
4:12 that so it actually been really helpful that I have the experience on what's happening on the that broker dealer side or the investment advisor firm side it's it I think it just helps with efficiency a little bit more because I don't necessarily have to ask a lot of the questions that some attorneys might have to ask because I already know what the process is and what we probably need to do to get our ducks in a row in order to make this faster and easier on the clients gotcha so I think the other one of the things about your practice is that you
4:49 really look to help people preserve their legacy so if you would unpack that for us when you talk about preserving a legacy what is that really entail it can mean a lot of things right some people think about it as money right you've spent a lot of time earning this money or maybe it's been passed down you know from previous generations we work with a lot of people with you know multigenerational wealth it it can be money it could be just that you have a presence right you could have a charitable presence in town and you know dedicate your time to philanthropy and
5:24 you want to continue that Legacy it's it's your name and your name can mean a lot of different things and so what we want to do is help people see how um you know what they have worked to achieve is really important and deserves to be protected and we also your family is your legacy that's that is that doesn't have anything to do with money you know raising your children to have certain set of values and to carry on traditions and things that are important to you those are all really important things to
5:59 do and your children your family is the one that's saddled with all of the stuff that happens when you die and you can make it easier or harder for them right it's you can't make it perfect because there's there's Perfection does not exist but we can certainly make it a lot easier for them and you know help them to ensure that things continue to go smoothly that your name still has the impact that it wants that your family uh you know that your money is preserved the way that you envision it and goes to
6:34 the Next Generation the way that you you envision it so I think we start by having those conversations and getting to know our clients and understanding what they have what is important to them you know it's not as simple as just plopping out a document right people want to act like this is just like go on the internet and print this out that is it is so much more than that because people are different right we're not all the same so we have different values and beliefs and goals and so we want to help make sure that what's important to you gets put on paper and then actually happens right so in my work um actually this this
7:12 dates back to when I was in the Navy I worked as a Chaplain U one of the things I found is a lot of times people didn't really understand the kind of things that you were talking about especially the non-monetary aspect so how do you how do you work with a client to really help them understand what their legacy is so that then you know you can go to the next step of of of helping them um you know perpetuate it or or um you know maintain it I think it's really just having a
7:49 conversation and learning about them and what is important to them and whether or not they care to have the things that they are doing continue to make an impact and that's going to be different for everybody some people just don't care like like I mean you should care but they're just like whatever I'm going to do what I want to do and like then my kids can deal with it and that's their thing I'm going to be dead I don't really care but I think when we especially when you're working with other Financial Professionals in that person's life and you can see all the things that they've accumulated and the the different ways that they're they're doing things and making an impact like I
8:25 I think charitable goals are really important right because um maybe you want to make sure those kinds of things continue and people don't realize that you can't always just have that stuff continue if you don't set up the mechanism to make that happen like we actually have to put a specific provision in that says you know allow my agent or my trustee to continue to make the kinds of gifts that I was already making because you don't want to become incapacitated and you've been this great philanthropic leader in town and then all of a sudden that just stops stops um
9:00 and if you want to still continue that presence you know out there you there are things that you need to do so I think starting with that conversation and understanding what their goals are then we can go further into how to make we're not ever supposed to say stuff like achieve your goals right so I but um we can work best to effectuate those you know with no guarantee that it will be perfect um but we can certainly we can
9:36 just that conversation is where you have to start and when we understand you and we listen to you listening is so important people don't realize that you see this all the time with certain advisers who just they are not listening to what you have to say and to what is important to you and when you listen I like to talk but I can listen it it's going to help make that plan better and your clients are going to be happier okay so so now you let's let's stick with your example of where someone was philanthropic um and and they they have
10:12 you know either a cause or a particular organization that they favor so what what in the in the absence of their children perhaps being you know as committed to that um cause or or organization as they are what can they do to make sure or not maybe make sure is too strong a word but but hopefully ensure that that Legacy will continue there are lots of things so I you know in the old in the olden days right setting up private foundations family foundations were the things to do
10:47 now there are slightly uh easier less red tape mechanisms like Donor advised funds where you're basically creating your own nonprofit you know through an a you know it might be through a Community Foundation I'm on the board of a Community Foundation that that does uh that kind of thing and um or you know different investment firms might have their own and you basically you get uh okay the tax deduction partly that's important that's not what your the point of your question um so you know you could essentially create your own funds that are that name Charities as ultimate
11:22 beneficiaries or you can name successor owners of of you know like your children to take over administering this fund on your death and continue to make what are called grants to these various Charities that's one way people do things if you want to have like an ongoing you know presence in that area um just even leaving you know your retirement accounts naming a charity as a beneficiary is a really helpful thing because it's not as tax efficient for your children to inherit your uh retirement accounts now now your kids
11:57 have to take this money out I'm not saying every circumstances most circumstances there's some little cats to the things in a 10year period so if you have a really large IRA and your kids are in a high tax bracket and they have to pull this money out over 10 years it's not necessarily tax efficient for them but a charity being a nonprofit that's not going to be paying taxes they're not going to have the same problem so if you have if you're looking at should I want to give you know a certain amount to charity should I leave that in my trust or should I do that in an IRA it might make sense to do that as
12:32 a beneficiary on your IRA which your adviser would talk to you about because this is not one siiz fits-all for everybody right so leaving them as a beneficiary is one way to do things creating a donor advice fund and naming your children as successor you know owners or administrators of it that's another thing that they can do um you can certainly go the private Foundation route I mean I usually think of that as like really big money I mean there's governance and all these extra rules and it's it's a lot to a lot of work it doesn't mean it's not the right solution for you uh but for a lot of people you
13:07 don't necessarily have to go that route so um all of these sound like there are um at least some level of administrative costs to to making them work um so at what level do people need to be financi where it makes sense for them to you know take advantage of some of these tools that you've discussed sure I did forget to mention there are like charitable trusts that you can create as well that aren't you know uh foundations
13:43 I I would say you know at any level you can name a beneficiary right that doesn't that that doesn't cost anything to do that just it just happens um you know I don't know that there's necessarily a magic number I think it's whether the tools make sense for you when you I mentioned a Donor advised fund sometimes people create that because you can frontload money and get a tax deduction on the front end because now that a lot more people are using the standard deduction they find that it takes a lot more money to to get over the hurdle of the the standard deduction before you
14:18 can start itemizing and and deducting all of your charitable contributions and so sometimes if you're having a really big tax year or a big tax event you might you can frontload to these donor advice funds and then in subsequent years you're just taking the standard deduction but you can continue to make these these grants and give like you you would normally give and so a lot of times when you have conversations like that you look at okay how much money does the person have what's their income what's the number to get over this hurdle you know you want to try to get over the hurdle as much as you can in that one time and if you can only do it
14:54 by a thousand dollar might not make a lot of sense to you know have this extra account there might not be a lot in it um you know you are paying investment fees usually because you want that money invested and it grows and um and so you know we're not talking about people you don't have to be like you know have $10 million for a donor advice fund to make sense I mean usually people who are really high income earners you're making multiple six figures uh where you you typically are giving away a decent amount of money every year like it's
15:29 normal for you to give 20,000 a year away 30 if and if you can frontload it you you might you know do a couple years worth of giving into that fund um I think when you start getting into other vehicles right you you're talking about people who have estate tax problems that number is g to become higher right so in 2026 today you get like 13.6 millionar a person to give away without an estate tax problem it's scheduled to Sunset back and adjusted for inflation I I think we're thinking it could be in the Six to7 Million range per person um when you start having an
16:05 estate tax problem that's also a clue uh when it might be a good idea to start really getting into some of these these different vehicles um and we don't know where if it ever went back down to like a million or two million you've got a lot more people that have an estate tax problem so I think that's a really good guide do I have an estate tax problem yes or no um but it doesn't mean you cannot do things way before you have an estate tax problem so and and it you kind of you alluded to this a little while ago it
16:41 sounds like much of the um tools available to deal with charitable giving do tie very closely to tax issues right so um are you mentioned that you handle Tax Matters as well H how do you kind of group those together so people can start to see um the benefits of of examining these issues in a holistic way um you know I think when you
17:16 start we give because we want to give I don't think I don't like to encourage people to give just because you could get a tax benefit from it right because you have to remember you're still actually giving the money right if you give $1,000 Away Great you might get 36% you know if you're in the 36% tax bracket you get a deduction but you you literally did give $1,000 do of your money away if if you don't care about the cause you might as well just keep the thousand and you know I just you know I'm not an advocate of just trying to find like a tax right
17:52 um but I think that [Music] um I I don't you know it's Tri tricky I mean you give because you want to give and then we look at everything and we see like again it's going back to your goals we we look at what the implications are tax-wise sometimes we'll do something where we'll give money to family members up to the amount that is uh you know they're allowed to pass on without taxes and then everything above that amount goes to charity so we we we just have to look at everything and figure out it's going back and figuring out what your goals
18:27 are and and then seeing how the numbers might make sense um you know on a year-to-year basis right there's lots of little things that you can do right if you have a if you're over 70 and a half and you have an IRA with required minimum distributions now the the age to start those has gone up a little bit but they still kept this 70 and a half rule in place um for giving qualified charitable distributions so if you don't necessarily need the money from your required minimum distribution you have up to a certain amount that you can go give directly to charity you can't put it in your hands first you cannot make the check out to yourself and then give
19:03 it to charity you can have your investment person have you sign a form send it directly to the charity and it avoids being reported um on your tax return it's not going to be part of your income it gets a little it still gets reported but your tax person writes like qcd next to it for qualified charitable distribution so they know it's not taxable um so there are we might look at at that so having those conversations and getting a sense of how much do you want to give how frequently do you want to give then we're going to look at the different mechanisms that make sense and I I kind of forgot what your initial question was because I went on a tangent but hopefully I somewhat answered it
19:40 yeah yeah was it was talking about you know kind of the Nexus between the tax advantages of giving and and and and the giving itself and how you negotiate that so I and and and I I I I likeed your answer frankly because we should be giving because it's some something we care about right not because we're going to get a get get a tax deduction right so so shifting away from the charitable giving to other aspects of the Legacy um one of the things you mentioned was people have a name in a in a community they're they're
20:15 you know they're looked upon a certain way or their families looked upon a certain way how do you help them maintain what what sounds like a a a fairly intangible um aspect of their legacy you know that's about having the right people administering everything on your death right so when you give when you're using something like a Community Foundation that has a local presence in the community your name is still going to be attached to Grants and things that
20:51 are M are being made so you know the I'm just making this up because it's me but the Jennings family charitable fund right if I'm long gone um and I've funded it well gosh I hope I could fund it with money that lives on in perpetuity you know and um they're going to make grants my name is still going to pop up in various places when those when those grants are made that's one way to do it when you have your children administering things for you they are going to make it a point to say you know this came from this person and that's not always important to everybody you
21:27 know some people like to do things anonymously some people like to have their name you know on there but there's certainly ways when you structure uh the money when you structure the way you're gifting it to to make sure that when those grants and those donations are made it's clear who did it and usually places are going to publish that and they're going to put it in there so if that's important to you it's not that hard to do that it's a lot harder if you just leave your whole estate a complete mess and you know and nothing's done in an organized way and that happens way too much um you're not going to be you're just going to be you're not going to
22:03 have any kind of good Legacy that yes welcome to my world right as a professional fiduciary we're basically the guys coming in with the brooms and yeah yeah people don't realize how messy that is and it's stressful and exhausting and uh it it takes a long time so and they don't believe us I mean it's like I'm telling you I'm like I have no incentive to tell you to clean up to do this the right way because I make more money if you don't right
22:40 right well and what you know something something you've been saying struck me just now and that is especially for people who die in testate they virtually lose control of how their legacy is is perceived um and and the amount of frustration caused by dealing with all of these messes um you know I I I find people saying things like well you know he was a great guy but you know it's like it's so
23:16 frustrating dealing with the Fallout of of you know the lack of of planning that um it it it kind of bches that image sort of which is really counterproductive I I would say to you know the work that you're looking to do right I mean it's if you're trying to leave something for other people you being organized about it is the best way to do that and so and I think it's interesting when you brought up the whole intestate concept you know that's
23:51 dying without for the people who don't know right when you don't have a will and it's going to pass by State Statute but I also think people put way too much emphasis and importance on a will right people are always talking about the will and then they read the will on TV and I'm like those people were not relying on their will to transfer their assets they had a trust and so what a lot of people don't realize is you know the will if you have kids right very important because you are naming Guardians for your children and hopefully the court agrees that those are the appropriate people um
24:26 but you're still in Probate if you're just relying on a will you're still relying on a court process a long drawn out thing it's public people can see your stuff um there are costs there are you know the you're paying a lawyer to file all this extra paperwork uh when you create a trust a revocable living trust you know that is basically accomplishing a lot of the same things that you think of when there's a will only it allows money to be held you know for longer periods of time for your kids you know when you just use a will when your kids turn 18 they would get the
25:02 money right because kids can't inherit money before they're 18 so it goes into a conservatorship or a guardianship every state uses different terminology I think the Bry Spears thing was a great example of that because people finally saw that word out in in the real world even though um in her case she was alive and that happens too when you're incapacitated you have these proceedings but also for young children who are minors and can't manage their own Affairs you know you are filing things with the court you were under Court supervision and then when they are 18 they just get the money and I don't know about you but I don't want my kid to just get all that life insurance when he turns 18 because then he's not gonna go
25:37 do anything productive with his life so um people place this emphasis on oh when you die without a will and all that it's like great yes you want to have a will that is part of the estate planning package but there are um we want to not have anything go into court if we can help it and we want to have everything pass um and organize in a document that is outside of that process so when you rely on the state when you don't have a will or anything in place the state that you live in that statute's going to govern
26:12 how your money goes you may not like it you may not even know people are often surprised like in at least in Missouri when you have kids the spouse doesn't get 100% now if they're on a joint if they're a joint co-owner on an account right because you can pass things to people through account ownership and contracts you know insurance and things like that but like if I just have a a bank account in my name no transfer on death provision it's got a million dollars in it I would love that by the way um and I di you know my it's got to go through probate my husband gets like the first $20,000 and then has to split at 50-50 with our son so people are
26:49 always they're surprised it's not going to necessarily go the way that you think it's going to go so um it can be messy and definitely not accomplish your objectives because the state just wrote what they kind of think is right and fair right they don't know you they don't know if if you don't have a spouse or kids that you don't speak to this sister or that brother or that Uncle or you know they don't know so the only way that you can make sure your money gets where you wanted to go is if you actually plan for it so so at at what point in and I know this you're not
27:26 making a a legal recommendation specifically but in general at what point um do do you recommend people consider creating a living trust because for example I have a I have a friend here in California who's one of the top probate real estate agents and and his his position is if you own a house in California you need to have a trust because that house is you know that one asset is enough to justify um you know the expense of of creating that trust so right do you have a what is kind of do
28:01 you have some general guidance on on that issue I think I mean at least in Missouri I know we're friendlier than California is so I am not surprised if like more planning is better in California from what I hear um so I think generally though for any estate planning documents the second you're 18 right you your parents don't have the ability to get your records your if you have a Health crisis you know you should be getting a power of attorney for financial matters and Healthcare matters when you're 18 I think you know when you're young and you don't have a lot you can in most places I don't know how everything works structure things so that you have a beneficiary on all your
28:36 accounts you know if you've got your bank account your 401k is going to have a beneficiaries listed you make sure you have primaries and contingents um and you pay attention because people die and things happen and you don't want to just leave them there forever and forget about it um and so a lot of times that kind of stuff is okay you know while you're young to get through that definitely when you have kids especially if you have any life insurance right U and most people we would say like when you have kids you should be buying term life insurance because it's cheap and it's gonna replace the income of the parent that
29:11 dies and you can you know continue to like live and pay your bills and um and so but if if something happens to both of you right you could have a sizable amount of money that's going to be for their benefit and so I think definitely when you have kids you should be doing an estate plan and I think your attorney if you're working with somebody who is actually an estate planning attorney I know we're about to run out of time but not this is not like your cousins Brothers whatevers like mechanics business attorney should not be doing your estate planning stuff um they are going to tell you what is
29:46 appropriate and you know I've had cases where I'm like you know not when they have little kids but I'm like you're so close like if every te is crossed and every D is added ey is dotted I'm not gonna like force you to do this I think it's a better choice but you know but if something happens in the meantime like you're G to have to come back and we're going to have to do this like if one of your kids dies or you know something like adult child um so they should tell you what is appropriate and so you've gotta have that meeting to know right and we're we're kind of up on time but one other
30:21 question occurred to me that i' I'd like to ask you and and that is um if someone has prop in more than one state and given that trust in state and probate laws are really a state by state function so what do they need to do in order to make sure that um you know property is is is properly handled across state lines yeah you a lot of times it's good to have connections with other attorneys in other states like I know we have a network of people that we can reach out
30:56 to in Florida or or wherever if if you have stuff but you know most of the time I can't say that this would always work right but if you have your trust most of the time deeding the property that you own there into your trust or if you know maybe it's a rental or it's an LLC it it just depends on like what kind of what the property is but there are mechanisms to transfer title out of your individual name into something that should that should allow you know your successor trustees or the successor you know managers or members
31:31 of your entity to be able to handle that without having to go to court does not mean that there won't be something that comes up because every state has their own little little things but for the most part when you do it that's why you have to tell your lawyer everything people are like well I didn't think it was relevant let us decide if it's relevant you know I need to know is this a rental property is this where do you have this I don't care if you own only a 10 of it I need to know right so that's why when we say tell us everything tell us everything so and that way you know we can try to make sure that we can stay
32:07 out of probate court in other states as well as well very good well Jennifer this was so informative um and and and by the by the way you have a sense of humor I I I'm thinking you know if this whole lawyer thing doesn't work out you may have you may have a career and stand up well I'm not going to deny I don't try to be a little funny on LinkedIn sometimes so it does encourage me and you know I you know yeah maybe my backup career so there you go there you go well
32:42 what really appreciate you spending this time with us today and um you know hopefully um you know down the road we'll check in with you again because you know the these things do change and like you you mentioned one of the big ones that i' I've talked about here on the show which is the um lifetime exemption you know is potentially um changing dramatically at the beginning of uh 2026 so um really appreciate all of the knowledge you share so I'm just going to do a quick sign on if and if you don't mind hanging tight we'll we can chat for a minute offline okay thanks for having
33:18 me so folks thanks so much for joining us today I I I hope you found this um not only informative but enjoyable as well and and um if you have any questions um um Jennifer's contact information um will be in the show notes so uh you know don't hesitate to to reach out um and and I'm I'm sure she'll be happy to um talk with you about your estate planning needs or the questions that you have um especially if you're in the St Louis area but as she mentioned she has a network elsewhere so uh you know if you're in another state um I
33:55 would say you know feel free to reach out to uh Jennifer as well I'm sure she'll help you so um tomorrow at 10: a.m. Pacific time is business lessons from the military and then on um Wednesday also at 10: am Pacific time um I'm I'm having a guest jock Payton who's going to talk about special uh financing for businesses so you don't want to miss jock he's another fellow with a a very interesting background like like Jennifer so I hope will tune in for my other shows this week so Jennifer one
34:30 last time thanks so much and uh hope you all enjoyed it wishing you a wonderful rest of the day and signing off as I always do Marie You Are My Bell