People sometimes put their estate documents in a file and forget about them. Elder law attorney Steve Waltar joins Suzanne to talk how to keep your estate plan documents current.
Steve explains, “If you buy a car, would it be wise to never, ever maintain it? Of course not. Would it be okay to never fuel it? So that’s my analogy, a good car. You would take a look at it, you’d keep it maintained, you keep it fueled. It’s going to run most efficiently.
“So as a rule, we say people ought to come in every five years, or if there’s a change, they come to us. But I’ve had enough clients say, Steve, I want to make sure it’s current. And I thought about the idea of life insurance. And I thought, ‘Hey, we insure things to make sure they’re going to work.’ And so we developed something called a VIP plan. And for $600 a year, they get one hour with an attorney, that’s already worth over $600. And they get updates, like if you have changed the name of your agent and your powers of attorney, your health care, your will, you get those all routinely updated… Also for the trust clients, they get to update their assets. It’s a way to like make sure you’re meeting with an attorney routinely. Family get a discount then, because you’re a part of this membership. I’m an estate planner, so my kids, when they turned 18, they got powers of attorney, they got health care, they got HIPPA, all that stuff. But I think a lot of my clients, their kids go off to college, something happens, and the parents can’t even be notified about the medical status of their daughter or their son, because they don’t have a HIPPA authorization. So our VIP means you get free free healthcare powers and HIPPA authorizations and all that for your kids up to age 25. It’s totally a huge benefit.”
Steve adds, “I had a client. We did a living trust. They had a good size estate, the assets from growing. The wife had cancer, things got bad. We did some reviewing of, you know, what was needed for health care powers and stuff like that, and figured everything was … Anyway, the wife died, and we learned later that the financial advisor moved $3 million out of the trust and made it joint with a survivor, probably thinking they were doing a favor. But what that did is, it gutted the estate tax planning and ultimately it’s costing the family about $240,000 because of the assets that were moved out of the trust.
“The annual review with the attorney is priceless, really. You catch those sort of things when you look at who is the owner, who are the beneficiaries… It’s good to review that stuff.”
“We encourage people to bring their kids to the signing of the plan initially, if they’re in-state. But a lot of times part of this VIP thing is — the kids are flying in for Thanksgiving or Christmas, or they’re here — they want to have a family meeting, so that we’re kind of the referee. We can explain the tax plan… I think it’s just great when people are willing to communicate that with the family. The kids find it kind of a little nerve-racking, but it’s helpful to be talking about this stuff.”
Visit the Legacy Estate Planning website at waltar.com for beneficial articles, resources, and webinars. For more information:
- Steve Waltar
- Books by Steve Waltar
- Webinars and seminars
- Find an attorney in your state
- Hear more podcasts with Steve Waltar at Answers for Elders
Check out our affiliate podcast Alzheimer’s Speaks.
