The WAY to WOW Shows
Beyond the Grave
March 3, 2022
Automatically generated from YouTube captions; names and wording may contain errors.

[0:00] got it okay okay so we are live and you're gonna hear siri say um this meeting is being recorded or something like that and that's that's your time to go okay leah okay good afternoon and welcome on this wonderful tuesday march 3rd 2022. i'm so excited to be here with all of you today and you know you should stop and give yourselves a pat on the back because you stopped in the middle of your day some of you may be at work some of you you may be on the go but you said this might be important i might learn something i'm

[0:36] going to hop on to the way to wow show so thank you for joining and taking the time and i want to thank our producer rabbi kevin bemel for giving this show such love and attention and always making sure to bring content to individuals and today we're going to provide a lot of value you know the reason for these shows is to help people learn in a fun way in an informative way the basic stuff about how to build financial freedom how to be prepared with all life's uncertainties and we're going to bring different guests different weeks to bring you the up and coming the latest and the greatest information

[1:12] on every idea that you could imagine so stay tuned for more things but today we have a special guest with us and i'm excited to bring to you um his his mind his talent his experience we have jeff condon here with us all the way from santa monica a little bit about jeff and i'm so thrilled to to get to know you personally and then have everyone else here with us today he is an experienced attorney um in estate planning and he is also an incredible author in fact the wall

[1:47] street journal calls his book um i'm gonna i don't wanna miss words right so best selling inheritance related in america by far now that's some serious business it's titled beyond the grave i don't think i've ever heard a better title than that and really helping families prepare you know their trust setting it up properly there's so much that comes along with it i know i don't just have questions i know our guests will have questions for you too jeff and so you know he's an incredible dad like i mentioned 30 years over 30 years with his practice in santa

[2:23] monica and there's so much wisdom here to share so um i guess my fur i would love to just dive in to the to the content i think i would like to start by asking you jeff what inspired you to get into this industry what made you say this is what i want to do uh nepotism leah how about my dad uh was a lawyer and the field of inheritances and avoiding conflicts in the inheritance arena that was what my dad did and i so i just went into the family

[3:01] business certainly the door was open for me but i had to make myself um useful so getting you know putting that foot in the door can only get you so far and so i considered myself just like any other new employee new lawyer at firm i made myself useful i was a fly on the wall in my father's office to learn about how he handled particular inheritance situations and what would happen in the in the legal context after clients died

[3:38] and the kids came in and had meetings with my dad for advice on administering the plans and distributing the assets to the family hopefully without any type of conflict or family divisiveness so i'm fond of saying that if my dad had been practicing in small dog protection law i would have done that as well so there was an opening for me and that's what i did and i uh made that my career and what i like about it is you know and this sounds trite but it really is about helping people it's helping people at a time in their lives when they most need

[4:16] a lawyer to guide them through a particular process you know i'm not suing corporations i'm not uh you know a personal injury lawyer or we're trying to maybe extort the best settlement that can possibly be obtained for a client um not to say that that that there isn't a value in that but i like going to bed at night knowing that um that when people come to see me it's the first time that maybe they had to see a lawyer in their whole lives you know they haven't been sued they haven't been divorced they haven't established a

[4:52] corporation so when they come and see me i like that sense of appreciation that they have for what i can do for them and i do enjoy doing what i do for them in this arena because folks need help in this they may not realize it but they need help in uh in coming up with the proper plan to leave their money and their property to their children and grandchildren and other heirs in the right way so i know i'm you know ask me one question i'm going on for 20 minutes but i really do enjoy helping people i really do enjoy helping people and i could tell

[5:27] yeah yeah in this in this avenue sure yeah and and piggybacking off how you just ended you know leaving it in the right way you know of all the greatest hits right and i say that twofold you talk about doing it the right way what are some of the wrong ways what are some of the right ways of leaving inheritance to your children well it's such a it's it's such an open-ended question because there are just so many pitfalls that can befall a family in this context in the inheritance context that can inadvertently work to destroy families

[6:03] make it so that they will never speak to each other again and we've seen what happens with with family fallout that comes as a result of a plan gone wrong you see i started you know i was in this practice with my dad and my dad over a number of years had established a clientele of hundreds of hundreds of folks and when i came into the firm that was when the clients that my dad had obtained started being in what my dad called the

[6:39] dying time of life and we got to see the real lessons the real examples of what happens when clients pass and children divide the inheritance before then it was just all theory because it was just words on paper until they started to die off and then we had the real experience of seeing what happened and from those experiences from that school of hard knocks because there's no class in law school that can teach you how to avoid inherent how to recognize and resolve inheritance conflicts after parents die

[7:14] but from those examples we got to see really the the the questions to ask the the the issues to take into consideration that we never considered before and from those examples of of what happened um when cl when clients died we were able to come put together sort of a greatest hits that's i think that's what you were alluding to a greatest hits of what to do and what not to do in the inheritance arena in order to keep families together and that's what our that's what our our philosophy is

[7:50] there's some there's some people just don't care you know some people say hey i don't care what what happens with my kids after my you know after we die whatever happens happens you know we do what we want with our inheritance plan that's the end of it and that's great okay that's certainly one viewpoint but our viewpoint or the one that i that my father had the one he instilled in me was our children are our most precious possessions and our the inheritance plan is the last great lesson that you will leave to your children after your death and if that lesson plan goes sour

[8:26] so too will the relationship between your children be sour as well and that's not and if people think about it say maybe that's not how we want to do it so what does condon have to say about making sure that the let that this great lesson doesn't go sour okay there there are some basics there are some some uh ones that i would say that whenever i bring them up um i get a slew of people saying gee we better change our inheritance plan to ensure that it does x or it doesn't do x and the first thing that comes to mind

[9:02] in this greatest hits of making sure that the inheritance plan does no harm to the family after passing is to name is to make sure that your inheritance plan names all of your children as your after death transfer agents after uh after you pass but uh by the way can you still see me because i don't see you okay i see you i hear you i'm taking some of these important nuggets and i'm writing them down you know this is so valuable jeff i i'm so grateful that we have you here and i'm glad that the audience is here with

[9:37] us because some people might just name their oldest child or their most responsible child who might be child number four or two right and so that's a very important lesson i'm sure you'll dive into that a little bit more and share why is it so important maybe please mute yourself marie karol please mute yourself um because why you know tell us a little bit about more why would you name all children what if you have a disabled child do you still want them named on there well you know we have to look at the reality of what the facts are presented to us

[10:12] in order to see if we're going to deviate from this sweeping generalization that you should name all of your children as your after death agents in the in using the term the correct terminology you know most uh most of your clients most of my clients have living trusts and the living trust inheritance instructions are carried out by your successor trustees or your after death transfer agents because they're the ones in charge of transferring assets from your trust after your death to the live

[10:47] beneficiaries and more often than not those after death transfer agents are going to be your children so we're saying you should name all your children as your after-death transfer agents in your living trust because what are the consequences of not naming all your kids in the in the main well the consequences are that if you uh name just one then the children who are out of power may make your power child's life miserable questioning every decision he or she makes and we're not even discussing beneficiaries we're just

[11:23] discussing making sure the beneficiaries get and so my question would be what if the beneficiary information differs is unequal what are some of the pitfalls you've seen in that situation well that's that's interesting uh because you know if if you're going to name all your children as your after-death agents their job is to transfer to the beneficiary so the children will essentially transfer it to themselves and there's and if everything's in equal shares there's not really a problem usually usually but if you just name one child um then you know that child has a lot of power

[11:58] the power to decide what distributions will take place when the distributions will take place the power to decide what each child's equal share will consist of the power to decide which age which cpas will be used which lawyers will be used there's a lot of power and what do you have on what do you have on the other side you have the uh on those children who are not in power on the outside looking in but jeff i have a question on that i apologize for interrupting it's okay i mean all children have to agree because what if it takes them two years to come up with the right you know plan of action do this does it doesn't necessarily mean that they all need to wait until they

[12:33] all come to an agreement well that's an excellent point leah because um naming you know uh my advice of having of the clients naming all their children as the after death agents would seem to go against a smooth and efficient after death transfer process and yeah i can see where somebody will say well jeff i've got three kids you know too many kids spoil the bra i just want one in charge or say hey jeff um i just want uh you know i have a a child who's in business the other kids they're not in business and i think that my business child will be uh

[13:08] better equipped to do this and that makes a lot of sense but when you have but when you have this power that this this unequal sharing of power that the you know you have to look at as a weighing process are the problems that may arise by not naming all your children as the agents going to be greater than the ones that then the problems that present itself by having to have all of the kids on there as the agents in order and having to get all the signatures to make

[13:44] any type of transfer move my experience has been my experience has been that even though all the children let's say it's three kids all of them are named as successor trustees there's going to not be so many problems why because even the most recalcitrant even the the child with laden with the most family baggage is going to realize hey wait a minute if i make if i throw a monkey wrench into the works and i make a big deal about us something that really there's no you know there there's you know there's no substance there but you know uh my you know about

[14:21] my siblings were mean to me when i was a kid and i'm going to be mean back you know this is the stuff of family baggage that's coming to bear but even the most okay even the most resentful recalcitrant giles is going to say if i do that if i just screw things up because i feel like it or i disagree then that's just going to delay me getting my share or i'm going to have for a lot of my share is going to be going in attorney's fees so i i you know there's that saying you know from that movie wall street greed is good greed works greed really works in the inheritance

[14:56] arena that to to make it so that all of the kids will get along to discharge the duties of successor trustees sign all the documents that are necessary to transfer the assets to themselves as equal beneficiaries hopefully it's equal and in my mind yeah and in my mind that is that you know that that that solves a lot of problems greed really solves a lot of problems i know i'm using it i'm actually going to write that down because that is important well speaking of creating um unequal you know between the children in an

[15:31] inheritance plan do you treat children unequally in an inheritance plan well there's two ways that clients will treat children unequally in the inheritance plan there's the inadvertent way and then there's the intentional way the intentional way is easy to recognize it's when parents would say jeff you know our our daughter doesn't need it as uh as much as our son so we're going to leave most of it or all of it to our son and i'm sure that our daughter won't mind um well you know there's a phraseology that we use in

[16:06] this office that's punishing daughter's successor and rewarding the sun's failure and that is very powerful repeat that for the audience again that's very powerful yeah well yeah it's punishing the successful child success and rewarding the uh uh the other child's when i say failure meaning not as successful as the successful sibling um but it's a phraseology that that we use that really brings that point home and more often than not when we have a situation like that the clients present we ask the client to could you uh could

[16:41] you bring in your successful child or at least not with us but into the conversation about being left less because of that child's success wow and a lot of times the you know first of all the parents may say no we're not gonna this is our decision we're not gonna bring our child and okay that's their decision i have a whole chapter on on you know should you tell your child about your inheritance plan the answer is unqualifiedly yes but um but if they do tell their child child the successful child that he's that he or she is going to be getting less or maybe getting cutting altogether

[17:18] just because he or she is more successful uh the answer is going to be either a bow jest which is a kind of a fake yeah that's okay whatever you want to do it's your plan who am i to dictate what your plan should be um or it's are you kidding me i busted my butt you know trying to bring success to myself and honor to my family by my success and what have you done you punished my success so i want to make you proud and that's how you reward me exactly exactly and then and then there's of course the

[17:54] just cutting out a child because you don't like what that child is doing with your with his or her life you know you may love your child but you don't love what he or she does so you say well i'm just not going to let my money the inheritance that he or she gets get caught up in that child's problems the first thing i would say to that is you know you don't have to cut out that child just because you don't like what that child's lifestyle is whatever that is whether it's drugs alcohol crazy cults you don't like the the you know your child's spouse you know there's all kinds of reasons we've heard for cutting out a child we say that well then why don't you just

[18:30] leave that child his or her share but leave it in a protection trust with a third party as trustee so you can ensure that the money and property is being properly used the way that you want it to be used that is a little bit of control from the grave but that's instead of the drastic step of cutting out uh a child but if you're cutting out a child because you are estranged from that child or or for whatever reason then you have to think about two things one you have to know that when you cut out a child you may be dumping that child into your other children's lives

[19:06] with that other child with that with that cut out child saying hey i didn't get my third i didn't get my half whatever it was and you two got it so you two siblings got it so now you have to take care of me and that could make your other children's lives pretty miserable um but the other one is if you are going to cut out that child you got to do it right i've got a bunch of cases i got one right now where you know a you know mom had between you know between adopted kids step kids

[19:41] foster kids you know like 15 15 kids but she wanted all of it to go to one to one so i said okay if you're going to do that you got to do this you got to get a letter from your doctor saying that you are that you are a clear mind and concise thought um you have to get uh write a letter to me stating that you know why you want to just leave everything to the one child and we may audiotape or videotape the signing ceremony so when after the client dies when

[20:16] the cut out children or child announce that that they've got a lawyer and that the lawsuit's going to be brought we give all this information to the those attorneys and that usually ends the lawsuit and that lawsuit would be based on incapacity or undue influence or whatever but with all this information you know audio letters doctor's letters and maybe even a psychiatrist examination report you know if the clients are willing we throw all that out that ends the lawsuit but leah that's the intentional way of cutting out a child that's that's let's

[20:52] talk about how you inadvertently cut out a child or excuse me leave it uh leave your children an unequal inheritance right and in this category you know your mom you know your clients mom and dad whoever they have a plan that leaves everything equal you know one-third each okay so that that seems to be equal what where's the problem where's the inadvertence the inadvertence comes when the parents don't realize your clients don't realize and i get this and i know that there's a there's a real divergent viewpoint on this

[21:28] but when the from the child from the children's perspective from their perspective when they're receiving an equal inheritance it ain't equal to them if the parents have not treated the children roughly financially equally during the parents lives because i promise you leah that when children when parents die and i've seen this in countless meetings seriously not exaggerate that the k the children will take into

[22:03] account all lifetime gifts that the parents made to the children during the parents lives and even if the inheritance plan says equal distribution it's still not equal from the kid's perspective unless there was rough approximation or a a rough attempt to equalize during the parents lifetimes and um and i understand that how do you correct that well you have to recogni you have to recognize the problem first my dad used to say 95 percent of the solution to any problem is recognizing the problem in the first place so one of the before they died exactly

[22:40] so one of the questions that we never asked my dad never asked this until he saw a slew of clients die and then saw this in a slew of situations where this situation came up and so uh and we saw this that this work to destroy families where the children who did not receive greater you know uh uh lifetime gifts you know it's the common example is three kids you know mom and dad sent one of them to some sort of professional uh school doctor lawyer whatever and the other kids did not go to a higher education or you know just got

[23:15] married out of high school whatever but you know when the parents died and everything goes equally you know they're going to start to do rough mathematical calculations the parents are not because the parents they don't see the relationship between lifetime gifts and and the instructions in the inheritance plan but the kids are they're keeping it they're keeping an economic scorecard even though the parents are not and if that economic scorecard is not roughly equal when the parents die the kids are going to be resentful so we point this out to the clients when we're doing their inheritance plan we didn't used to but we saw what happened and we saw that this issue comes up so

[23:51] we say number one have you made unequal lifetime gifts and number two if you have do you care about equalization wow oh no mr khan and that's not no we really don't you know you know you know our money is our money we treat our kids how we treat them and you know they're lucky to get anything and uh you know so just okay fine they're making an informed decision great but when we raise this issue a lot of times parents say you know we never really thought about that before and maybe we should do something to equalize wow and whatever that plan is you know uh like you know there's a whole bunch of solutions whether it's

[24:27] giving more to the other kids now to equalize or leaving additional shares in the inheritance plan to the other kids uh who didn't get the greater lifetime gifts um you know uh or you know if the parents can't afford equalize maybe they buy an insurance policy and the insurance policy beneficiaries are the kids who got the shorter end of the stick there's all kinds of solutions but the point is recognize the issue and this is how this is how children are inadvertently treated unequally uh yes no oh i'm sorry it's a question penny no this is so valuable you're bringing up

[25:03] really incredible points that i'm sure most people on this call myself included never even thought about but it's so true and it makes so much sense and it's really important you know some people on the call or some people listening to this might already have a trust in place and might even go back and make adjustments um or you're about to set one up take all this into consideration and start thinking about ways that life insurance was actually a very i heard recently you know someone said i don't really have a lot of money to leave my kids i i don't really want to think about a trust i'm not quite sure and a a way that you can solve that is by like

[25:39] you mentioned um you know a death benefit to just give them a love goodbye yeah yeah yeah leah i'm not an insurance agent i'm not in the business of selling insurance but i can tell you that and i talk about this in our books that life insurance can be a real good tool for a lot of inheritance planning situations and uh that in which situations arise which could create conflicts like for example you know i'm doing this and i'm doing this in my life i'm getting uh i was married before i have kids from a first marriage

[26:14] and i've and i'm getting married uh may 29th to i was lucky oh thank you i was lucky enough to meet a just a terrific gal and um so you know i'm in this business and i know for a fact that if i just do the traditional thing of leaving everything to my second wife for her life then on her debt that goes to my kids i know that there's an economic connection between my first kids and my second spouse that's not such a great connection because now you have these first kids out there who just can't wait for this stranger to die before they can get their inheritance and

[26:49] and so what i've done is i bought a life insurance policy and i named my my future wife as the beneficiary of that policy so when i die she gets that policy my kids get what they're going to get they walk away everybody's fine nobody's having to rely on anybody else to die can we mute everyone how to mute themselves please or kevin maybe you can mute fred and lisa thank you i just i muted you and and uh jeffrey

[27:26] swanson i just unmuted myself so jeffrey unmute yourself please because i think what kevin did was he muted everybody um so that is a great way to solve the problem thinking ahead making sure there's no animosity hard feelings like you said we're waiting for her this this person to pass so we can get our share that was that's a really great strategy and um speaking of that you know leaving assets to your to your second spouse and then to your children is that what you would advise most people to do i mean i'm sure every situation is different it's a case thank you

[28:01] but there are a lot of families that have second marriages third marriages that comes up often what other tips can you give to someone in that situation well like i said before it's important to recognize the issue because um you know a lot of times you know you know i'm going to use myself as the example just because it's easy for me to do that um i'm going to you know if you know if i wasn't thinking about it i would say well i'm just going to leave everything to my second wife for life and then on her death it goes to my kids because it's just like as if it was i was married to their mother and uh would

[28:37] just require and to just have to wait for their mother to die except that somebody else but then we had the real experience of seeing what happened um in these situations after clients died and what you saw was this conflict between the first children and the second spouse uh you uh you know and time doesn't permit me to go into all those conf one of them is income versus growth you know you have the second spouse who says i want as much income from these assets as possible um because i get income from them all and the kids are saying oh my god forget that we want growth we want to know that

[29:12] these assets are at least keeping a pace with inflation so you have that conflict and you have the i can't the conflict of i can't touch i we we don't get this these assets until this stranger dies we can touch the house we can feel that we can see it we want to sell it so we can enhance our own lives but we can't until this person died you know i've had second wives tell me that whenever they get a call from their uh you know from their step kids that they can sense an arab disappointment on the other end of the phone after they realize that as you picked up the phone it's like oh you're still alive

[29:47] you know how rude so but but it is situational so but laugh but no no no this is yeah it's kind of it gets absurd so but anyway but there are but yeah uh probably belaboring this point but um if this is a matter of concern then we try to see what we can do to terminate that economic connection between the first spouse and the second children sometimes there's just not enough assets to make that you know to give some to one give others give things to others to the other whichever whichever it is um you know and then if if they're you

[30:24] know if sometimes not every problem has a solution because there may not be enough funds maybe that the insurance premiums are too high so we're fond of seeing if there's no solution to this problem then you know gather the kids in the lawyer's office and let the lawyer just say this is the way it is life this is life in the big city and you're just gonna have to live with this at least it won't be a surprise after uh after the connecting tissue parent dies you know so um but there's all kinds of solutions to that yeah yeah yeah it's so detailed and you know because i

[30:59] i know from years ago i have a friend who has a sister there's actually you know a brother and three girls and two of the sisters don't talk due to what was inheritance issues i guess parents not setting it up properly and it really does break up families so what you're saying is so important and i'm sure the parents did not have any intention of that but it just they didn't have someone like you to sit with them and really show them the larger picture and especially looking into the future of what that can do and and more on that topic about leaving you

[31:34] know things to your children what about leaving debt to your children right um how do you knock children in a in a creditor debtor type of yeah all right well that i would call i would uh have this go under the category of making sure that your inheritance plan does not harm the relationship between your kids um and as this discussion involves the you know a not not untypical situation where mom and dad have loan money to a child during their lifetime because they want to help the child at the time the child needs help

[32:09] and they said okay we know we're not going to give it to you nobody gave us a free lunch so we're going to loan you this money and we're going to really show you that this is a loan that's that that really is you know needs to be paid back you know it's not just words on paper so um it's not an idol promise so they get the let's say their son and a daughter their son borrows maybe a hundred thousand dollars to get that down payment house start a business go on vacation buy orthodontia for the kids whatever so they loan the money to their child their son and the son signs a note

[32:45] it says okay i promise to pay you back a hundred thousand dollars with interest blah blah here's the here's the payment schedule and all the parents going great okay here's a hundred thousand and later on they realized that okay we you know we're start we got payments at the beginning but now those payments are not coming along as as often as they were uh let's uh let's call up the sunday what's going on oh yeah we needed this we needed to do that why promise payment is coming and but the payments are not and pretty soon the sun's not coming

[33:20] around not calling as much or at all and but even more significant the sun's not bringing his kids around to see grandma and grandpa all because of the awkwardness of the unspoken subject of the fact that he's not paying everybody back he's not paying back so after a period of time the parents say we've got to do something we're just going to say you know what forget it i'll go just say so son you know what almost forgive me you don't have to pay it back okay and the sun goes woohoo you know here's you know great you know life goes on

[33:56] okay then the parents then the parents die and they have a living trust that leaves their assets to you know their son and daughter equally great okay son or daughter equally but guess what there's that note it was never ripped up uh it's it's it may have been sitting around in some file or some safety deposit box but it may be yellowing with age and it may be dusty but there it is and a note to the parents where they're the beneficiaries um that's just like any other asset that the parents have it's like a house it's like a bank account it's an asset of the

[34:33] trust the state that is to be divided equally between their children so when everything goes to the two kids that means everything goes everything includes that note or that loan that has not been paid back so what happens well now we have a creditor debtor situation between these two kids you know the son doesn't have to pay you know it doesn't have to pay himself back the half that would go to him because that because he's the creditor and the gender and that merges together but the sister is going to say you know

[35:09] you owe me one half of that and that's what would have been more to split if not for you yeah it's right and and besides you owe me one half plus the interest so now that 50 000 that i'm entitled to was now something crazy like maybe 250 000 whatever it is um and also you know because the note's still here and also why should you have had the benefit of the money that you got to use from the mom and dad all that time if they would have loaned me that money i too would have had some equity in the house worth hundreds of thousands or a business whatever so i'm enforcing that and the sun says well you can't enforce

[35:46] that against me because you know the statute of limitations is run or whatever um the point is here now we've gone from you know the sun may have a point depending on the terms of the note uh there may not be a courtroom solution to this to the uh you know for the daughter's problem of uh of enforcing this this note but we're not talking courtroom justice here we're talking family justice we're talking siblings not talking for a while this is yes and i've seen this come up maybe there's been a note maybe there hasn't been a note maybe there's been a loan that's been talked about it's it's

[36:21] but but loans even if they're not on paper they're still enforceable just depends on the terms of the note and as long as there's proof of the loan whether somebody's changed their position whether there's been you know copies of checks that have been paid you know whatever you can easily prove up the existence of a of a promissory note or alone but the point is that you have kids who were pretty close before who now are not speaking to each other over a a inadvertent unequal inheritance and the reason why it's unequal is because the son got the benefit of the

[36:58] of the uh of the loan during his lifetime and now it's not being paid back or at least the daughter's not getting her share of the uh of the payback of that debt after the parents die so so the point is don't let a don't let your one child be a debtor to another child it's just going to screw up the relationship because money does funny things to people leia you know you can have the closest relationship between kids but when money becomes involved like in the division of an inheritance you know family loyalty goes out the window and it's a whole new ballgame the

[37:34] kids won't speak to each other that their their kids won't speak to you know each other the grandchildren are not speaking to each other and now you have a a rep you know an irrevocable division in the family that will never be breached and a lot of times the grandchildren are saying gee why are we never talking to that other side of the family and it goes on for for a long time so forever so this is the stuff of money it's um you know you know you can know somebody all your life um you know you you know you know somebody forever but when money

[38:11] becomes involved if you have a money relationship with the person whether it's debt or creditor whether it's shared gun inheritance whether it's you know starting a business with somebody you never really know that person until money becomes involved that's when that's when true character is shown yes yeah and uh you know people there's a lot of estrangement out there in this arena which is why getting back to one of my main points is is recognizing these issues that can come up to create this divisiveness in this at least in the inheritance uh and recognize those problems

[38:48] and come up with ways to resolve those problems um but that is uh you know using the inheritance plan to make sure that uh at least from a parent's perspective that work has been done to try to come up with solutions to make sure that the kids and a lot of those solutions involve involving the kids input and but that is an anathema to a lot of people a lot of people say i don't want to bring my kids into the process of me doing this living trust or these inherited instructions i don't want to deal with them i never talk to them about money i i don't want i don't want them involved

[39:24] you know we think that a lot of it is because well the kids are going to be unhappy if they find out what's really going on in that inheritance plan and they and the parents just don't want to face up to it now they say hey after i'm dead whatever but there's there's several reasons why parents should bring their kids into the to the process we think we if not during it at least after it having a family meeting around the on zoom these days right or around the you know the officious looking lawyers conference room not the official looking lawyer it's the lawyers officious looking conference room right officials you know

[39:59] so anyway there's a lot of reasons i got i've got chapters in my books about why you should bring your kids into the estate planning process yeah in case anyone is tuning in a little later than you know i want to say the name of your book again because i feel like it's so important that people go on it's available on amazon i'm assuming beyond the grave and you co-authored it with your dad is that right yeah yeah it was um yeah it was the you know on the first book but there's two books okay one is called beyond the grave the subtitle is the right way and the wrong way of leaving money to your children and others and my dad and i

[40:34] wrote it together but back then it was my day you know i was just you know just you know newbie lawyer but and these but this book was uh the stories and all were based on my dad's experiences and his in his then like 30-something years of seeing of dealing with clients and seeing what happens with their estates after they die you know like i said school of hard knocks so i wrote my dad's book i was the english major at ucla go bruins my daughter sarah graduated last year from there oh muzzle tops there muscle tableau but so anyway long story short

[41:10] i wrote the book in my dad's first person and that book was became the best-selling inheritance planning book in american publishing history it helps to have ann landers mention your book in her heart yeah that really helped it it helped to be on i think we're probably the only jews i've ever been on the pat robertson show because uh because he um he he he he likes talking about um using your inheritance plan to leave money to his 700 club so he says oh what a great thing i'm going to have condoms on and i can jump i can use that as a

[41:45] jumping off on on that platform to talk about leaving money to the 700 club he was a genius at raising money through inheritance dollars um uh but anyway so we wrote that and then it was you know it was revised and so i think on that book uh it's now like in the fifth revised edition and uh so it's it's it you know it's it won't uh the book industry has something called remaindering if your book is no longer selling it gets remaindered our book has never been remaindered i don't think it will because the topic is the topic of

[42:20] of avoiding inheritance conflicts is an evergreen it has no season um but after that after my dad passed i wrote this one it's called the living trust advisor everything you and your financial planner needs to know about your living trust and um yeah so and so that's like the the second iteration of beyond the grave um it's structured differently it's got different stories and whatnot but anyway there it is you know you're giving me an uh a platform up from which to plug my book so how can i resist you can't resist i think it's important the stories really impact when you hear the

[42:55] stories and you you can actually feel the emotions between the siblings i mean i'm one of 11. you know we have kids yeah and and and a grandson and i could just imagine you'd never want to have that conflict when you're not here the you want to leave them behind like you said settle it all before because everything after your gun has residual effects for generations and we could if we could do everything in our power that we possibly can to avoid that we need to find out what those things are um you know one of the things you

[43:30] mentioned before i'll get into some question answers protecting the children's inheritance from their creditors yeah there are you know what happens when they get divorced or remarried maybe touch upon that for the next couple minutes if that's okay yeah oh yeah yeah yeah no it's not all right leo forget it how dare you yeah oh my gosh i'm gonna you know hang up now in a huff uh let's see so this is a very this is a very important aspect uh because a lot of people forget that when they die that the assets that they've accumulated during their lifetime are going to wind up in the hands of their kids

[44:05] okay i know it's such an obvious thing but when it goes into the hands of their kids it becomes subject to their children's problems in life you know bankruptcies divorces yeah um you know accidents with insufficient insurance to their creditors to their bankruptcies to their income tax problems you know if they belong to a crazy cult then you might wind up with that you know tithing to that particular cult um yeah there's a there's just a laundry list of problems that that that pose risks of loss

[44:41] to our clients assets that they work so hard to accumulate during their lives we just forget about that because once it's in the hands of their kids they own it the kids own it now what now the kids losing it to a divorce that's not what our clients have in mind so what we do now is we no longer leave we no longer have our clients leave to their children and outright inherits outright meaning here you go via condios and you know hope you know hope you don't screw it up yeah um instead we have the clients leave

[45:17] they're in the inheritance of their children to their children in the form of something that uh it it's it's a sub trust it's a subtrust built within the body of their living trust that the living trust is is a one big document the sub trust is created within and established in and by that document and that subtrust is called a protection trust protection trust okay so that just depending upon the problem that the children have or may have that

[45:52] we're attempting to to protect the the inheritance against right that money and property the in that inherited share will go in that protection trust with a trustee who will be in charge of that share that share and to that trustee is then charged with the duty of of using the funds the inheritance share in that sub-trust in that protection trust for the purposes set forth by the clients the parents so you could have the trustee saying that

[46:29] okay this share this inherited share will go into my son's protection trust and my son will get all the income and my son will get all the principal for support and health and maintenance and education and and what have you you know all the greatest hits in life right medical what have you but then when my son dies then the assets that are left over in that protection trust will go to my son's children without giving my son the power to divert those assets for improper purposes whatever those are could be you

[47:04] know you know drugs alcohol crazy cults whatever you know divorce whatever so that when my son dies it must go to my grandchildren and if my son doesn't have any grandchildren to my other child but if my other child if i don't have another child or that other child is gone then to my other child's kids and if none then to some charities and friends whoever it is that the parents want to direct it to now the question is who's going to be the trustee who's going to be the one holding the money well most of the times it could be the child

[47:39] himself i know that sounds inconsistent but if we say to the son you are the trustee of your own trust and you are legally obligated legally to ensure that the money and property is used in accordance with the terms and the provisions of this trust so it says you son trustee can pay out the income to you son beneficiary and you son as trustee have the duty to pay out the principle and different principle for these in appropriate purposes nice but what doesn't but what isn't an appropriate

[48:14] purpose an appropriate purp an inappropriate purpose is giving it away or leaving it to a spouse or giving or giving it to a spouse or some guy walking down the street or using it for you know all of these you know these you know it says you what you can do with it and anything that's that doesn't fall in that list you can't do now the next question is somebody asked well if the sun is in charge who's going to be the one monitoring that sun so that he is insured to use it for those proper purposes well

[48:50] this is this is where the real world kicks in if the trust is revocable or irrevocable then there are beneficiaries who do have the ability to say hey son you're not allowed to do that you just can't throw it in the street like that who are they it's the beneficiary legally speaking it's the beneficiaries of that trust after the sun dies but those beneficiaries may be three years old they may not be in a position to protect themselves right right but but this but

[49:25] this is the real world this the real world is we don't want to tie the sunspring hands with this we don't want to tie his hands right by limiting him to have to go to a third-party trustee every time he wants to write a check so we can buy food at ralph's right you know unless the son's a drug addict or some that he has some kind of problem that just makes it so readily apparent that he needs protection from himself he's going to be his own trustee if the problem that we're trying to protect against is making sure he doesn't blow it you know uh doesn't you know lose it to a spouse by giving it to his spouse

[50:01] well then we say to that son this is why you're getting the part the trust in the third you know in the in this manner so that it sort of ties the string around your finger to make sure that you recognize this inheritance is is precious property it's property that you're inheriting from mom and dad it's family money and property and it's mom and dad's wish that go down the bloodline instead of being diverted by your widow and then going into your widow's second spouse's kids from her first marriage you know so

[50:36] yeah so it's kind of a compromise yes the sun may have the ability to because nobody's looking over his shoulder no policeman looking over his shoulder may have that ability not authority but ability to divert it but legally speaking when we say to the sun you have to use it for these purposes that oftentimes most of the time that's enough to keep the sun on the straight narrow with regards to the usage of that inheritance so that's a protection trust and nine times out of ten that's how my clients are going to leave their children's inheritance in this type of

[51:11] protection trust and that it's like it's like imagine like a castle wall that's built around that inheritance whether that wall is super thin or whether it's super thick depends upon the type of problem that we're trying to protect against that poses a risk of loss to that inheritance once it's in the child's hands so that's that's how we deal with that if the child has a lot of predators you know that wall may be so thick where we have a third party trustee where the third party is instructed that that uh that that that he may discretion he may pay income and

[51:46] principle to that child because in that situation when the child has a lot of creditors those creditors could end up with it all if the trustee actually has the mandatory duty of paying out income or principal to that child so we'll leave it to that trust in in a may relationship may you know and the trustee sold absolute discretion may pay out something to that child because if it says may then the creditors cannot um uh cannot come in and then take uh that child's inheritance is so important yeah

[52:21] anyway so yeah it's it's i'm kind of all over the map on this but the point is that parents have to recognize that once that inheritance is inherited by the kids it becomes subject to the problems in those kids lives we have to draft now to protect it from that risk of loss sure for sure wow thank you so much for that um i don't want to leave room for questions but i also want to also put a little um plug for next week because next week's show is i'm actually going to be interviewing my personal mentor dina michael we're going to be talking about women and leadership success

[52:57] principles how to change your mindset from e to b being an employee to a business owner so tune in next week the same time um if you're listening to this but i wanted to give something that sounds good thank you yes and i want to give some space for people um to raise their hand or just come out with the question that you might have for jeff at this time regarding estate planning yeah or it might be crickets or it might be crickets or it might be crickets they'll say they'll say jeff jeff you've stunned us into silence respectful silence we we we have no idea what you know uh we're just

[53:34] i think you're giving a lot of people food for thought it's it's really it can be very devastating and it can go really smoothly and there's a lot between and so having someone to to sit you down and show you some of the negative things that have happened so we can learn from other people's mistakes i mean why do you think most of the stuff happens because it's been done and it's happened and we want to avoid those things yeah yeah no no that's absolutely right when our book was when we submitted our book and it was after it was accepted after it after it was accepted for publication um the powers that be at harpercollins

[54:09] got involved and said we really want you to eliminate the part where you're admitting that you made certain mistakes because that's because the reader wants to know that that he or she has a lot of faith in the author and the authors never make mistakes because you're supposed to come across as authoritative and what have you we said well you might just we might as well just give you our advance back and cancel this because the whole point of this book is learning from our previous mistakes and making sure that that stuff or at least we tried to draft so that the that the problems that was a result of our mistakes never come up again

[54:44] um we won that we we won the day on that one but um yeah i'm in here jeff first of all i want everybody on the um on in the meeting to know i put a link to your book on amazon in the chat and also i put a link to your website in the chat so if people want to be able to get a copy of your book or get in touch with you that's in the chat and then we have a question from marie carroll jeff she asks how early on in life should we do a trust oh okay well that boy that's that's a great question uh the first thing is a determination

[55:21] has to be made as to whether you even need it because you know you know we're not going to sell you something you don't need it's one of the reasons why the first consultation is free i can't charge you a fee to tell you what the fee is going to be so if you come in and i say not a simple will will just be fine you know and or you don't need anything at all hey that's great then you know that's part of the deal you come in so i can assess so and so just to let you know if anybody's going to go out there and go to a lawyer that for for estate planning that first consultation really should be free because it's not ethical in my mind to charge someone a fee just to tell them what the fee is going to be

[55:57] but let's let's say that but the general rule is if you have real estate you should have a living trust if you have real estate should have a living trust that's a general rule of thumb um but uh uh but when you know i've had clients in their 20s who have been extremely fortunate to be uh you know to be quite wealthy um and so i've done done for 20 year olds but the the the bread and butter of my practices i'm dealing with folks who are in their 50s and 60s and 70s and that's when they've you know accumulated the wealth that they're

[56:33] going to have from a starting point from an estate planning perspective um i guess i guess the answer is you come in when you want and let the lawyer between the lawyer and you we come up with the decision as to what it is that you need and and when you should need it right that's the further question because her daughter is purchasing a home with her boyfriend should her daughter think about having a living trust because she's now going to have a property with so actually because she's not married to him it probably makes a lot of sense but i'm not the expert i would say

[57:08] i would say don't purchase the property in joint tenancy with your boyfriend because now anytime you want to wheel and deal with that property you're going to have to have everybody consenting of participating to any transaction also if you purchase it in joint tenancy if you purchase it then if something god forbid happens to her her boyfriend's gonna end up with it all maybe that's okay but on the other hand you know because that's joint tendency by rider survivorship surviving joint tenant wins gets it all so my recommendation is that if she's going to go into a partnership with her

[57:43] boyfriend that she should have her share purchased in the name of well could be purchased in her name but then she should transfer her half to a living trust which says that on her passing her share will go to the people that she wants it to go to even if she wants it to go to her boyfriend that's okay but maybe she wants to go to a boyfriend for his life and then maybe then on his death then that half after he's done using it because he's no longer alive then it goes to her people but um but also but as an aside and this isn't

[58:19] really anything about estate planning you know if you're going into partners in property with anybody you really should have some type of a type of agreement that speaks to the duties and obligations of all the partners because you know you know it maybe wind up where she winds up saying hey i'm gonna you know pay the property taxes what are you going to pay well you know he should be obligated to pay one half of the property taxes there really needs to be an agreement spelled out i know this sounds like you know some lawyer trying to get some business i'm telling you right now it that that whatever he was paying a lawyer

[58:54] to do uh to in order to um execute this in order to draft a property agreement between partners is going to pale in comparison to the lawyers fees that are going to ensue when the problems of joint ownership ensue wow so there you go a lot of lessons learned right there that are so valuable it's so romantic to buy a hospital we're so in love all right now you have this home and and it could be very sticky and and people think it's so unromantic to to do these

[59:30] paper this paperwork but the truth is it's the most romantic because you care so much about what could happen if and you never want someone you love to have to go through such heartache and headache and hassle that could really be going through hoops in courts and you know um yeah and who knows what so i agree thank you so much jeff this was so fun and i hope that i brought a lot of value to all of you um having jeff as a guest because these are the things that we don't always get around to doing we don't love discussing we procrastinate on these topics but

[60:06] what the goal of for these weekly shows is to bring you into ideas and conversations that you may have been thinking about having but we're just afraid of what's on the other side but to make it more fun and uh doable and i appreciate you all for taking part in today thank you rabbi kevin and thank you jeff and have a phenomenal rest of your week everyone a great weekend and we'll see you next week on the way to wow thursday at one o'clock pacific have a great day thank you leah thank you rabbi bye now

[60:42] mmm