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Pamela Maass has been recognized as a “Top Lawyer” by 5280 magazine in its annual ranking of the state’s most respected attorneys. https://www.5280.com/2021/01/denvers-top-lawyers-2021/?fbclid=IwAR35V8tvtyzxoi03HKdtpIq7zX9PofcyqYlaY9N9-0j8UrPeuy691Px_dzk
To create its rankings, 5280 magazine surveys nearly 16,000 licensed attorneys in Colorado to identify the most successful and respected lawyers in 50 legal specialties. It then conducts follow-up research to further vet those attorneys who were rated most highly among their peers.
Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. Are you ready to protect your loved ones and legacy? Check out my next presentation.
Pamela Maass Named Top Lawyer in 2021 by 5280 Magazine
Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. Are you ready to protect your loved ones and legacy? Check out my next presentation.
Pamela Maass Speaks with Fox 31 About Importance of Medical Legal Documents During Pandemic
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Quotes:
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Links Mentioned:
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Episode 017: Following Your Heart in Business
On November 27th, nine days after being pulled unconscious from a house fire in a beachfront home in New London, Connecticut, Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of the online shoe retailer Zappos, died due to complications of smoke inhalation.
Hsieh, who was single and had no children, was just 46. Although the cause of the fire is still under investigation, law enforcement ruled his death accidental.
At the time of his death, Hsieh was worth an estimated $840 million, but in spite of his immense wealth, it seems he did not have a will. While it’s not uncommon for the rich and famous to die without a will, and many iconic figures—Prince, Aretha Franklin, and most recently, Chadwick Boseman—also died without creating this basic planning document, Hsieh’s case is particularly puzzling given his altruistic nature.
Hsieh was renowned for his kindness, generosity, and always putting others first, yet by dying without a will, he left his loved ones a colossal mess to clean up. Indeed, it will likely take his family many months just to account for all of his assets, and it’s likely they will overlook—and may even never find—some of those assets.
From there, Hsieh’s estate will have to go through the court process of probate, which could last years and rack up hefty lawyer fees. And after all of his debts are settled and creditors paid, Hsieh’s family will face an enormous federal tax bill that could run into the hundreds of millions.
By all accounts, Hsieh’s death at such a young age is horribly tragic. But it’s equally tragic for such a brilliant and compassionate individual to have wasted the opportunity to do real good with the assets he created and to needlessly put his loved ones through such an ordeal.
Although it may seem harsh to lay such a judgment on Hsieh, who was reportedly suffering from mental health and substance abuse issues in the last year of his life, we do so from a place of true compassion. Indeed, we cover this case and others like it in hopes that it will inspire you to remember that death comes for us all, often when we’re least expecting it. And without any planning in place, you are forcing your loved ones to endure a costly legal process and the unnecessary loss of wealth and assets you worked so hard to build.
While the loss to Hsieh’s family, and the charitable causes he would have likely supported, will be immense, his family can afford to pay the lawyers, the court costs, and the taxes. Though you likely have a much smaller estate than Tony Hsieh, the actual cost of loss to your family, if you don’t plan, could be much higher on a relative basis.
But here’s the good news: All of this suffering can be easily avoided with planning. And you don’t have to be a multi-millionaire to create a plan that’s guaranteed to protect and provide for your loved ones no matter what happens to you.
An Internet Pioneer
Hsieh grew up in San Francisco, the son of Taiwanese immigrants and the oldest of three boys. A graduate of Harvard, where he studied computer science, Hsieh started his first company, LinkExchange, in 1996 with his college buddy Alfred Lin, who would become his close business partner.
LinkExchange was one of the first major digital advertising firms, and two years later, at age 24, Hsieh sold it to Microsoft for $265 million. After selling LinkExchange, Hsieh and Lin launched the venture capital firm, Venture Frogs, which is how he met another young entrepreneur named Nick Swinmurn, who pitched Hsieh the idea of starting an online shoe company.
That company would become Zappos, which ultimately defined Hsieh’s career and set in motion his vision for life and business. As CEO, Hsieh made it clear that Zappos was far more than just a shoe retailer: Zappos was about “delivering happiness” and “a WOW experience.” Zappos focused heavily on customer service, and famously offered customers free shipping and complete refund on all shoes for a full year after purchase, with no questions asked.
Hsieh’s leadership proved highly successful, and Zappos saw its sales go from $1.6 million in 2000 to $252 million in 2005. In 2009, Hsieh sold Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 million in stock, while staying on as the company’s CEO. Jeff Bezos was reportedly so impressed with the way Hsieh ran the company, he allowed the young entrepreneur to continue running the brand with very limited oversight.
In 2005, Hsieh moved Zappos headquarters from San Francisco to Las Vegas, where he invested $350 million of his own money to transform a once seedy part of town into a hub for arts, culture, and tech. As part of the project, Hsieh created a community of 30 Airstream trailers, where he himself lived for years with his pet alpaca named Marley.
In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Hsieh said the community was inspired by his experience at the Burning Man festival. He described the 1-acre park as an “urban camping experience with everyone sharing the world’s largest living room, which includes a community kitchen, a firepit, and a stage.”
Hsieh’s interest in fostering community and connection with the Las Vegas project, Airstream park, and other ventures reflect the young business guru’s overarching vision—which was about more than just retail.
“He was never interested in shoes,” former Zappos executive Fred Mossler told Forbes. “Tony’s journey was to improve the human condition.”
Growing Pains
Around the time Hsieh moved into the trailer park in 2014, he started to lose touch with many of his old friends. While many of his peers had gotten married and started families, Hsieh remained single and developed a reputation as a heavy partier.
According to a cover story on Hsieh’s life and business accomplishments in Forbes Magazine, the young entrepreneur was always a heavy drinker and known to use recreational drugs, but in later years, his drug use became more frequent. What’s more, close friends noted that Hsieh also suffered from mental health issues, including insomnia and depression.
Hsieh’s struggles with depression and substance abuse reportedly intensified in early 2020, as the quarantines from the COVID-19, which hit Las Vegas particularly hard, put an end to the parties and nonstop action the young entrepreneur craved. In January, right before the pandemic exploded, Hsieh attended the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and fell in love with the upscale ski resort town.
Vowing to recreate his Vegas utopian community in Park City, Hsieh decided to relocate to the town, purchasing some $70 million worth of property around the area, while establishing a $30 million angel fund to help local businesses and startups. In the spring, he split his time between Vegas and Park City, but by the summer, Hsieh made Utah his new full-time residence.
Hsieh’s new home and the centerpiece of his Park City properties was a $16 million, 17,350-square-foot mansion with a private lake he called “The Ranch.” During his transition from Vegas, Hsieh reportedly promised to double the salary of friends who would agree to relocate to Park City and help him in his quest to revamp the community.
The Park City Crew
According to Forbes, at least several dozen friends took Hsieh up on his offer and moved to Utah with him, where they lived for free in some nine properties he purchased in the high-end Aspen Springs neighborhood. In Park City, Tony helped many local entrepreneurs and propped up local businesses struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic with lavish spending on restaurants, bars, limos, and concierge services.
While Hsieh initially relocated to Park City to focus on “health, wellness and rehabilitation,” by the late summer, friends and family reportedly became concerned with his increased drinking and drug use. Longtime friends found it hard to reach Hsieh, who grew increasingly isolated, surrounding himself with a new group of younger friends, most of whom were on his payroll.
According to Hsieh’s close friends and colleagues who spoke with Forbes, Tony’s new entourage of friends, he dubbed, “The Park City Crew,” were encouraging him to indulge in more frequent drug use, which his old friends felt was getting out of control. At the same time, he grew more isolated and even paranoid, and at one point, a team of security guards Hsieh hired basically barricaded sections of his main house, “blocking anyone who didn’t have Tony’s permission to enter,” according to Forbes.
In August, it was announced that Hsieh was retiring from Zappos after more than two decades at the helm. Although the timing of his retirement was suspect, Amazon denied pushing Hsieh out, and insisted that stepping down was his own decision, according to Forbes. Whatever the case may be, his friends and loved ones became so worried about his condition, they staged several interventions in order to convince him to seek help.
Apparently, the interventions worked. Hsieh was reportedly planning to check himself into a rehab facility shortly after a planned visit to see friends and family in Connecticut for the Thanksgiving holiday. But as we now know, Hsieh’s plans to turn his life around were tragically interrupted.
Next week in part two of this series we will cover the last days of Tony’s life and how his lack of estate planning created a nightmare burden for his family that is only just getting started.
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Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. Are you ready to protect your loved ones and legacy? Check out my next presentation.
Former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh Dies Without A Will—Part 1
“Babies are individuals,” says Molly McDonald, Body Mind Parenting Expert, and there is no perfect way to treat your baby. Molly, who has worked with babies and new parents for over twenty years, talks to host Pam Maass about the power of spending quality time with your baby, and how her own path to business came when she was faced with life as a single parent.
As a Body/Mind Parenting Expert, Molly often gets asked what exactly her work entails. In reality, Molly essentially founded her field, because she found that her work in clinical psychology and massage didn’t take her exactly where she wanted to go. Her fascination with the bond between parents and their newborn babies led her to create Touch-a-Day (TAD), a membership program for parents with new babies that provides insight on touching techniques, massage, and tips and tricks to better understand your baby and their needs.
Molly tells fascinating stories about her experience teaching parents how to do modified massage on their premature babies in the NICU, and shares some mind-boggling statistics about the power of touch — including the fact that babies who are massaged in the NICU gain weight faster and leave the hospital sooner. But when it comes to guidelines for parents looking to support their baby’s well-being, Molly is firm in her belief that each baby is different. She shares some cues to look for to guide your interaction with your baby in a way that respects who your baby is an individual.
Along with at-home breast-feeding tests and infant massage and stretching exercises you can do with your baby, Molly shares her expertise on the mindful practice of being a parent. Molly reminds us that spending quality time with your infant isn’t just good for the baby – it’s good for you too. Just taking the time to breathe deep and soak up the joy of being with your child is a simple practice that can make everyday a little bit brighter.
Quotes:
- Quality time for me with a baby comes from first getting present (7:10-7:15)
- Following your baby’s lead is the key in everything (13:12-13:18)
Links Mentioned:
https://www.instagram.com/mollyturnermcdonald/
Facebook Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/theworkingmoms
Pamela Maass on Linkedin
Podcast production and show notes provided by FIRESIDE Marketing
Episode 016: Creating Quality Time With Your Baby
Since you’ll be discussing topics like death, incapacity, and other frightening life events, hiring an estate planning lawyer may feel intimidating or morbid. But it definitely doesn’t have to be that way.
Instead, it can be the most empowering decision you ever make for yourself and your loved ones. The key to transforming the experience of hiring a lawyer from one that you dread into one that empowers you is to educate yourself first. This is the person who is going to be there for your family when you can’t be, so you want to really understand who the lawyer is as a human, not just an attorney. Of course, you’ll also want to find out the kind of services the lawyer offers and how they run their business.
To gather this information and get a better feel for who the individual is at the human level, we suggest you ask the prospective lawyer five key questions. Last week in part one we listed the first two of these questions, and here, we cover the final three.
3. How will you proactively communicate with me on an ongoing basis?
The sad truth is most lawyers do a terrible job of staying in regular communication with their clients. Unfortunately, most lawyers don’t have their business systems set up for ongoing, proactive communication, and they don’t have the time to really get to know you or your family.
If you work with a lawyer who doesn’t have systems in place to keep your plan updated, ensure your assets are owned in the right way (throughout your life), and communicate with you regularly, your estate plan will be worth little more than one you could create for yourself online—and it’s likely to fail when your family needs it most.
Think of it this way: Yes, your estate plan is a set of documents. But more importantly, it’s who and what your family will turn to when something happens to you. You want to work with a lawyer who has systems in place to keep your documents up to date and to ensure your assets are owned in the right way throughout your lifetime. Ideally, the lawyer should get to know you and your family over time, so when something happens, your lawyer can be there for the people you love, and there will already be an underlying relationship and trust.
Your lawyer should proactively communicate with you and keep you and your family educated on an ongoing basis. We think sending out a weekly (at least) email is best. I prefer to hear from the professionals with whom I work on a monthly basis by regular mail and on a weekly basis by email, but depending on the relationship, it could be even more frequent than that.
If you are considering hiring a lawyer who doesn’t take the time to proactively communicate with his or her clients, this should be a red flag. That’s a sign that the lawyer may be stuck in an old, outdated mindset that won’t address your ongoing needs in the way you deserve.
4. Can I call about any legal problem I have, or just about matters within your specialty?
Given the complexity of today’s legal world, lawyers must have specialized training in one or more specific practice areas, such as divorce, bankruptcy, wills and trusts, personal injury, business, criminal matters, or employment law. You definitely do NOT want to work with a lawyer who professes to be an expert in whatever random legal issue walks through the door.
That said, you do want your personal lawyer to have broad enough expertise that you can consult with him or her about all sorts of different legal and financial issues that may come up in your life—and trust he or she will be able to offer you sound guidance. Moreover, while your lawyer may not be able to advise you on all legal matters, he or she should at least be able to refer to you to another trusted professional who can help you.
Trust me, you wouldn’t want the lawyer who designed your estate plan to also handle your personal injury claim, settle a dispute with your landlord, and advise you on your divorce. But you do want him or her to be there to hear your story, refer you to a highly qualified lawyer who specializes in that area, and overall, serve as your go-to legal consultant.
In this capacity, you can call your personal lawyer before you sign any legal documents, any time you have a legal or financial issue arise, or whenever anything that might adversely affect your family or business comes up, and know that you’ll get excellent guidance.
With this in mind, look for a lawyer who has an ongoing service program or membership program, in which you can pay a low monthly fee and be able to call with all of your legal and financial questions, without being charged hourly for the consultation. And be sure that when you call, you get to schedule time to talk with your own lawyer, who you know and trust. We love the idea of legal insurance plans, but we don’t love that you don’t get your own personal lawyer with them. You need to know your lawyer, and know that your lawyer has your back.
5. What happens if you die or retire?
This is a critically important—and often overlooked—question to ask not only your lawyer, but any service professional before beginning a relationship. Sure, it may be uncomfortable to ask, but a truly excellent, client-centered professional will have a plan in place to ensure their clients are taken care of no matter what happens to the individual lawyer managing your plan.
Look for a lawyer who has their own detailed plan in place that will ensure that someone warm and caring will take over your planning without any interruption of service. If your lawyer prepared a will, trust, and other estate planning documents for you, or if you are in the middle of a divorce or lawsuit, you want to make certain your lawyer has such a contingency plan in place, so you won’t be forced to start over from scratch should your lawyer die, retire, or become otherwise unavailable.
Finally, if your lawyer offers a membership program, you’ll want to make sure he or she has a relationship with another lawyer or a network of lawyers who can continue to service you under that program.
A Lasting Relationship
Although hiring the right estate planning lawyer may not seem like a super important decision, it’s actually one of the most critical choices you can make for both yourself and your family. After all, this is the individual you are trusting to serve on your behalf to protect and provide for your loved ones in the event of life’s most traumatic experiences.
Should you choose the wrong person for the job, your family could potentially face all manner of unnecessary conflicts, expenses, and legal entanglements during a time when they are at their most vulnerable. In the end, estate planning is about far more than having a lawyer create a set of documents for you, and then never seeing you again, or only seeing you when something goes wrong.
With us as your Personal Family Lawyer®, we develop a relationship with you and with your family that lasts not only for your lifetime, but for the lifetime of your children and their children, if that’s your wish. Our unique, family-centered legal services are specifically tailored to provide our clients with the kind of love, attention, and trust we’d want for our own loved ones.
To learn more about our one-of-a-kind systems and services, schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session™ today.
Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. Are you ready to protect your loved ones and legacy? Check out my next presentation.
5 Questions To Ask Before Hiring An Estate Planning Lawyer—Part 2
Since you’ll be discussing topics like death, incapacity, and other frightening life events, hiring an estate planning lawyer may feel intimidating or morbid. But it definitely doesn’t have to be that way.
Instead, it can be the most empowering decision you ever make for yourself and your loved ones. The key to transforming the experience of hiring a lawyer from one that you dread into one that empowers you is to educate yourself first. This is the person who is going to be there for your family when you can’t be, so you want to really understand who the lawyer is as a human, not just an attorney. Of course, you’ll also want to find out the kind of services your potential lawyer offers and how they run their business.
To this end, here are five questions to ask to ensure you don’t end up paying for legal services that you don’t need, expect, or want. Once you know exactly what you should be looking for when choosing a planning professional, you’ll be much better positioned to hire an attorney who will provide the kind of love, attention, care, and trust your family deserves.
1. How do you bill for your services?
There’s no reason you should be afraid to ask a lawyer how he or she bills for the work they do on your behalf. In fact, questions about billing and payment should be among the very first subjects you bring up when you first contact them. No one wants surprises, especially when it comes to the bill.
If you call a lawyer’s office and they are reluctant or refuse to give you clear answers to questions about how they charge for their services, determine your fees, or what they expect certain services will cost, this is a big red flag. When someone is hesitant to discuss their billing or business practices, you could be in for some major surprises about what things cost down the road.
Find an estate planning lawyer who bills for all of their services on a flat-fee, no surprises, basis—and never on an hourly basis—unless it’s required by the court for limited purposes. And ideally, you want a lawyer who will guide you through a process of discovery in which they learn about your family dynamics, your assets, and they educate you about what would happen for your family and to your assets if and when something happens to you, and then support you in choosing the right plan for you that meets your budget and your desired outcomes.
Our process for your planning begins with a Family Wealth Planning Session™, in which we educate you about the law and you educate us about your family dynamics and assets, and then you choose the right plan, at the right cost, for the people you love.
2. How will you respond to my needs on an ongoing basis?
One of the biggest complaints people have about working with lawyers is that they are notoriously unresponsive. Indeed, I’ve heard of cases in which clients went weeks without getting a call back from their lawyer. This is all too common, but totally unacceptable, especially when you’re paying them big bucks.
That said, in most cases, these lawyers aren’t blowing you off—they simply don’t have enough support or the systems in place to be able to be responsive. Far too many lawyers believe they can take care of everything themselves. From paperwork and client meetings to scheduling and returning phone calls to connecting their clients with other advisors, there are just too many responsibilities for one person to manage all on their own.
The truth is, if a lawyer is a complete solo practitioner without support or works for a firm that doesn’t provide adequate support, sooner or later, they are almost certain to become overwhelmed and unresponsive. Given this, it’s vital that you ask your lawyer about how they will respond to your needs if you decide to become their client.
Ask them how quickly calls are typically returned in their office, ask them if there will be someone on-hand to answer quick questions, and ask them how they will support you to keep your plan up to date on an ongoing basis and be there for your loved one’s when you can’t be.
A great way to test this is to call your prospective lawyer’s office and ask for him or her. If you get put through right away—or even worse, your call gets sent to a full voicemail—think twice about hiring this lawyer. This means they don’t have effective systems in place for managing and responding to calls or answering quick questions.
Instead, what you want is for the person who answers the phone—or another team member—to offer to help you. And if that individual cannot help you, then he or she should schedule a call for you to talk with your lawyer at a future date and time.
Your lawyer simply can’t be effective or efficient if he or she is taking every call that comes through. Ideally, all calls to your lawyer should be pre-scheduled with a clear agenda, so you both can be ready to focus on your specific needs.
Next week in part two we’ll talk more about the ways in which your attorney should communicate with you and list the remaining three questions to ask before hiring your estate planning lawyer.
Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. Are you ready to protect your loved ones and legacy? Check out my next presentation.
5 Questions To Ask Before Hiring An Estate Planning Lawyer—Part 1
What is the empowered path? For Marta Spirk, Empowerment Coach, Speaker and host of the Empowered Woman Podcast, it starts with knowing yourself. Marta talks with host Pam Maass about her journey to becoming an empowerment coach, and what she’s learned as she guides women toward self-knowledge and self-love.
It was becoming a mom that sparked Marta’s journey toward self-knowledge – specifically, becoming a new mom with triplets. She became a coach not just to help others, but to find her own purpose, and achieve not balance, but harmony between self, family, and business.
What is Marta’s path to empowerment? It all starts with knowledge. As she says: “The more mindful I am of what I’m doing, the better of a job I’m doing.” But being knowledgeable is only the first step – you have to do something with it too. Marta talks about using self-assessment tools like the Enneagram that help you identify your strengths and weaknesses and determine your core motivations. In her work with clients, she encourages women to spend time not just taking those tests, but reflecting on them, and working through the feelings of shame that may come when we struggle to acknowledge our faults. In fact, Marta argues, often our weaknesses go hand-in-hand with our strengths.
Marta embodies her own mission, speaking openly and honestly with Pam about what drives her, and what she has learned about herself as she cultivates self-love and self-empowerment. Along with practical tips and a proven framework to guide her work, Marta embodies the spirit of her enterprise – she knows herself, and loves herself, and she wants you to do the same.
Quotes:
- “The more mindful I am of what I’m doing, the better of a job I’m doing.” (5:32-5:39)
- “Having a business and having a mom is similar in many ways – there is no text book” (5:55-6:03)
- “The empowered path is: I know all these things about myself, I will love myself through it, and I will work to become a better version of who I am.” (12:21-12:29)
Links Mentioned:
https://www.eclecticenergies.com/enneagram/dotest
Facebook Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/workingmomscolorado
Pamela Maass on Linkedin
Episode 015 Human Connection & Self-Love In Business
Today, we’re seeing more and more people getting divorced in middle age and beyond. Indeed, the trend of couples getting divorced after age 50 has grown so common, it’s even garnered its own nickname: “gray divorce.”
Today, roughly one in four divorces involve those over 50, and divorce rates for this demographic have doubled in the past 30 years, according to the study Gray Divorce Revolution. For those over age 65, divorce rates have tripled.
With divorce coming so late in life, the financial fallout can be quite devastating. Indeed, Bloomberg.com found that the standard of living for women who divorce after age 50 drops by some 45%, while it falls roughly 21% for men. Given the significant decrease in income and the fact people are living longer than ever, it’s no surprise that many of these folks also choose to get remarried.
And those who do get remarried frequently bring one or more children from previous marriages into the new union, which gives rise to an increasing number of blended families. Regardless of age or marital status, all adults over age 18 should have some basic estate planning in place, but for those with blended families, estate planning is particularly vital.
In fact, those with blended families who have yet to create a plan or fail to update their existing plan following remarriage are putting themselves at major risk for accidentally disinheriting their loved ones. Such planning mistakes are almost always unintentional, yet what may seem like a simple oversight can lead to terrible consequences.
Here, we’ll use three different hypothetical scenarios to discuss how a failure to update your estate plan after a midlife remarriage has the potential to accidently disinherit your closest family members, as well as deplete your assets down to virtually nothing. From there, we’ll look at how these negative outcomes can be easily avoided using a variety of different planning solutions.
Scenario #1: Accidentally disinheriting your children from a previous marriage
John has two adult children, David and Alexis, from a prior marriage. He marries Moira, who has one adult child, Patrick. The blended family gets along well, and because he trusts Moira will take care of his children in the event of his death, John’s estate plan leaves everything to Moira.
After just two years being married, John dies suddenly of a heart attack, and his nearly $1.4 million in assets go to Moira. Moira is extremely distraught following John’s death, and although she planned to update her plan to include David and Alexis, she never gets around to it, and dies just a year after John. Upon her death, all of the assets she brought into the marriage, along with all of John’s assets, pass to Moira’s son Patrick, while David and Alexis receive nothing.
By failing to update his estate plan to ensure that David and Alexis are taken care of, John left the responsibility for what happens to his assets entirely to Moira. Whether intentionally or accidentally, Moira’s failure to include David and Alexis in her own plan resulted in them being entirely disinherited from their father’s estate.
There are several planning options John could’ve used to avoid this outcome. He could have created a revocable living trust that named an independent successor trustee to manage the distribution of his assets upon his death to ensure a more equitable division of his estate between his spouse and children. Or, he could have created two separate trusts, one for Moira and one for his children, in which John specified exactly what assets each individual received. He might have also taken advantage of tax-free gifts to his two children during his lifetime.
Whichever option he ultimately decided on, if John had consulted an experienced estate planning attorney like us, he could have ensured that his children would have been taken care of in the manner he desired.
Scenario #2: Accidentally disinheriting your spouse
Mark was married to Gwen for 30 years, and they had three children together, all of whom are now adults. When their kids were young, Mark and Gwen both created wills, in which they named each other as their sole beneficiaries. When they were both in their 50s, and their kids had grown, Bob and Gwen divorced.
Several years later, at age 60, Bob married Veronica, a widow with no children of her own. Bob was very healthy, so he didn’t make updating his estate plan a priority. But within a year of his new marriage, Bob died suddenly in a car accident.
Bob’s estate plan, written several decades ago, leaves all of his assets to ex-wife Gwen, or, if she is not living at the time of his death, to his children. State law presumes that Gwen has predeceased Bob because they divorced after the will was enacted. Thus, all of Bob’s assets, including the house he and Veronica were living in, pass to his children. Veronica receives nothing, and is forced out of her home when Bob’s children sell it.
By failing to update his estate plan to reflect his current situation, Bob unintentionally disinherited Veronica and forced her into a precarious financial position just as she was entering retirement. If Bob had worked with an estate planning attorney to create a living trust, he could have arranged his assets so they would go to, and work for, exactly the people he wanted them to benefit.
For example, if he wanted the bulk of his assets to go to his children, but didn’t want to cause any disruption to Veronica’s life, he could have put his house, along with funds for its maintenance, into the trust for her benefit during her lifetime, and left the remainder of his assets to his kids. This would allow Veronica to live in and use the house as her own for the rest of her life, but upon her death, the house would pass to Bob’s children.
Scenario #3: Allowing Assets to Become Depleted
Steve is a divorcee in his early 60s with two adult children when he marries Susan. Steve has an estate valued at around $850,000, and he has told his kids that after he passes away, he hopes they will use the money that’s left to fund college accounts for their own children. But he also wants to ensure Susan is cared for, so he establishes a living trust in which he leaves all his assets to Susan, and upon her death, the remainder to his two children.
Yet, soon after Steve dies, Susan suffers a debilitating stroke. She requires round-the-clock in-home care for several decades, which is paid for by Steve’s trust. When she does pass away, the trust has been almost totally depleted, and Steve’s children inherit virtually nothing.
An experienced estate planning attorney like us could have helped Steve avoid this unfortunate outcome. Steve could have stipulated in his living trust that a certain portion of his assets must go to his children upon his death, while the remainder passed to Susan.
Additionally, Steve might have used life insurance to provide cash for Susan’s care upon his death, or he could have purchased a second-to-die life insurance policy for himself and Susan, naming his children as beneficiaries. Such a policy would ensure that regardless of the amount remaining in the trust, Steve’s children would receive an inheritance upon Susan’s death.
Bringing families together
Along with other major life events like births, deaths, and divorce, entering into a second (or more) marriage requires you to review and rework your estate plan. And updating your plan is exponentially more important when there are children involved in your new union.
As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we are specifically trained to work with blended families, ensuring that you and your new spouse can clearly document your wishes to avoid any confusion or conflict over how the assets and legal agency will be passed on in the event of one spouse’s death or incapacity.
If you have a blended family, or are in the process of merging two families into one, contact us, as your Personal Family Lawyer®, today to discuss all of your options.
Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. Are you ready to protect your loved ones and legacy? Check out my next presentation.
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