Nicole Loughlin from Florida law firm, Loughlin Law P.A. (https://loughlinlawpa.com/) simplifies the why and how of estate planning including wills, trusts, guardianships, and living documents (living wills, durable power of attorneys, etc). We learn how important it is to make estate planning, guided by an attorney, an act of love.
I do want this topic to become mainstream. Not mainstream in that we want to go with all of these DIY options. I’ve expressed my issues with those, but because we want people to not be scared to pick up the phone and call an attorney like me, it’s not scary. (Nicole Loughlin, P.A.)
Show Notes:
Loughlin Law, P.A. https://loughlinlawpa.com/
AMY:
We are back today with an episode that I am so looking forward to. I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic, which is estate planning. And we are lucky to have Nicole Loughlin. Nicole and I met after I saw an incredibly well-timed Facebook ad in my Facebook feed that seemed to be meeting me exactly where I was with some questions around estate planning.
So Nicole is a busy mom of three. She runs a successful estate planning and probate law firm in South Florida. And she may not tell you this straight up when you meet her, but she has some incredible accolades that I’d like to highlight. She graduated with her Juris Doctor from St. Thomas University School of Law. She graduated cum laude and was among the top 15% in her class. She was selected for the national trial lawyers top 100 and top 40 under 40. And she’s a lifetime member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, where membership is limited to attorneys who have $1 million in multimillion dollar verdicts and settlements. Fewer than 1% of US lawyers are members. So top notch wisdom here and a lot of experience. In the conversations that I’ve had with Nicole, she has a way of explaining state law in a way that’s so understandable and empathetic, because this can often times be a topic that is sensitive. It’s hard to think about what happens to our assets after we’re gone and also what happens to our children. And I’m really looking forward to having you with us, Nicole.
NICOLE:
Well, thank you, Amy. Thank you, Patrick, so much for having me here today. Excited to have this conversation with you. I could talk all day about estate planning, and I know it may be a morbid topic for a lot of people, but it’s so practical. I always say 10 out of 10 people are going to die. So not a conversation you want to avoid.
AMY:
That’s so true. We can’t escape it. We all need to start to be really thoughtful about that. And I think, just to me, it’s just such an act of love. It’s thinking about how do we really love the people we love through some really intentional planning.
I’m interested, Nicole, what led you to this field?
NICOLE:
I think it does have a lot to do with my ability to be empathetic. I had started my law practice in a law firm with a trial lawyer who taught me a lot. I learned a lot. There was a side of his practice that focused on estate planning and probate. And I sort of gravitated toward it. So when I opened my own practice, I decided to focus on that area.
We did a lot of different things at that firm and I decided to pick the things that really aligned with my personality. In law school, I really enjoyed my real property classes. I actually got the Cali Award. Most people, unless you went to law school, you don’t know what it is, but it means you booked the class. You got the highest grade that you can get in that class. They give you an award for it. So I loved real property law. I loved wills and trusts and probate. So when I started practicing in this area, I knew that I wasn’t going to be a courtroom lawyer. Even though my ego wanted to and I had done a lot of litigation when I started off. But, especially after becoming a mom, I realized that this was more my path.
AMY:
That’s so interesting how just following the empathy and pulling on that thread. And it just makes so much sense that, and I’m grateful to have your empathetic ear after I experienced our first call. I just felt very heard and understood. I know, Dad, you and Mom were sort of the first ones who introduced me to this whole concept of estate planning.
You probably know a bit more about this than I do but the question I’m going to ask Nicole is to start with some basics. When you think about an estate plan, what are some of the elements and why is each one important?
NICOLE:
I think that a common misconception is that an estate plan is just getting a Will done. Having a Will drawn up. And most everybody who comes to me says, my estate is very simple. We’re so simple. Everybody comes to me with that. We underestimate the complexities of our life. Some people have blended families; some people have minor children; some people have no children; some people want to leave things to some of their siblings, but not all of their siblings. So it’s never just a simple Will. And quite frankly, a simple Will doesn’t do very much for most people because in, at least in the State of Florida, where I am, if you don’t have a Will, the State has some default rules that kick in. And for a lot of people, the default rules are pretty much aligned with what they want. But for a lot of people, they are not.
So having a Will – I don’t want to under sell it – is very important. Especially if you’re somebody who has minor children or you have a blended family or you have people you want to disinherit or you have no children. You might have charitable interests that you want to leave your property to. So having a Will is important, but a Will doesn’t keep you out of probate, which is a court process that happens after you pass away. And in Florida, we have a pretty complex process compared to some other jurisdictions that I’ve been exposed to – although I’m only licensed to practice in Florida. But the misconception is that all you need is this Will, and that will solve all your problems. It really doesn’t. And it overlooks your lifetime planning, right? Say, something happens to you. There’s an emergency. You need somebody to make legal, financial, medical, healthcare-related decisions on your behalf. That can’t be done with just a Will. There’s other documents you need to have in place for your lifetime decision making. And then if you really wanna dig a little deeper and avoid probate, you want to layer on top of a Will. That may mean a Trust to funnel your assets through a Trust so that they avoid that court process. And I can talk more in depth about each of those elements to the plan. But for our podcast today, you tell me how deep we should go as I can talk about this all day.
PAT:
I have a quick question for you, Nicole. I’ve heard so many negatives if indeed everything ends up in probate. I’m curious, for you in the Florida area, what sort of timelines result if that is where your estate ends up? Are you looking at six months or a year in addition to significant expenses?
NICOLE:
Yes, in most cases. And I mean, that’s a really the better case scenario, a very streamlined probate with no wild circumstances cropping up. The courts like to see a probate closed within a year. So we tell people plan on at least 12 months, but it can definitely be shorter and it can be longer. It’s going to depend on the issues and the assets that are involved.
That includes of course whether or not there were estate planning documents in place; whether or not they were executed properly. Sometimes just to get the estate open, we have a delay because we’re trying to admit documents from another jurisdiction. We’re trying to admit documents that didn’t have the appropriate self-proving affidavit saying that all the witnesses signed in the presence of each other and in the presence of the testator. Also were all the documents notarized and did the notary complete the notary block completely. Sometimes even a small miss on that can mean that we have to get some extra proof to file with the court to get things admitted. So I tell people to really plan on at least six months for a formal full-blown probate administration. Now Florida has what we call a summary administration, which is kind of an ‘open it and a close’ process. It tells the court, I know exactly what all the assets are; I know exactly who is owed money; who the creditors are; who the beneficiaries are; and we just want you, Judge, to issue an order. You can do that if it’s been more than two years since the date of death and if the assets are less than $75,000. But I only recommend it if there’s absolutely no creditors, because if a creditor comes up after the fact, whoever received the money may have to pay that creditor at some point. So it’s cleaner to do a formal administration if you have any chance of creditors. The creditor period is two years long unless you publish a notice which cuts the creditor period down to three months. So we definitely have probates that have gone on longer than a year. Usually when that happens, there’s some underlying reason for it. Like there was a pre-existing lawsuit that was pending during the decedent’s lifetime and it that hasn’t resolved. Or the nature and the circumstances surrounding the death. If it was a wrongful death case, there may be a litigation for that and they’d need to have a probate open the entire time the case is being litigated. And we get a lot of those because in my practice I have experience in personal injury and I still take personal injury claims in my practice. So I work a lot with personal injury lawyers on their wrongful death cases as well as counseling on probate.
PAT:
Thank you. The message I’m hearing is to pre-plan appropriately, even though many of those issues may not happen.
NICOLE:
Yeah, the number one question that we get asked in a probate situation is just that – how long is it going to take and how much is it going to cost? And on the planning side, I can say with certainty, it’s going to cost you to get the foundational plan in place. We’re not talking about tax planning and sheltering assets and things like that, but just to get the foundational plan in place. It’s going to be cheaper to plan up front compared to than any probate, even that summary administration. So, it makes sense to put the plan in place.
And there are also things that you can do to avoid probate that are very easy. It’s not for everyone, but if you are married and you have adult children, you can list your children as beneficiaries on your assets, and that will avoid probate. It’s not perfect, right? It doesn’t take into consideration contingencies and things like that. It doesn’t take into consideration second level planning, grandchildren, maybe not perfect for real property and businesses, but that’s something that you can do to avoid probate. For people who have minor kids, it’s not that simple. They can’t name a two-year-old as a beneficiary on a bank account. That’s going to end up in a guardianship court where a judge is basically presiding over that money, overseeing the management of that money and the guardian until the child reaches 18. And then at 18, there will be an outright distribution. So no guardrails put up for minor beneficiary. So people with minor children don’t have quite as many options for probate avoidance as people with adult children.
AMY:
Which leads to another one of my questions. You know one of the aspects of this podcast is the multi-generational look at aging. You can tell my dad and I are in two very different decades. When you are having these conversations with someone who is closer to 80 versus closer to 50 What are some of the aspects that you think would be important for each of those age groups to be thinking about when they’re considering estate plans?
NICOLE:
Yes, it’s a great question because if we have a younger, healthy family looking to do their planning, there’s no rush, there’s no emergency and we can take our time to do it. The advice may be a little bit different than somebody who’s coming in and they’re more senior and maybe they have other issues. They have health concerns. They may have possibly diminished capacity, things like that, where it’s a lot harder and more challenging to get a plan in place. But of course not always. I met this week with a perfectly healthy 80-year-old couple and they’ve never done their planning and they were just ready to do it and that was fine. But there are other considerations. There is a whole sector of estate planning that’s focused just on seniors and it encompasses elder law planning, and people who maybe don’t have long-term care. They need to think about applying for need-based assistance as they’re aging. Medicaid planning may be involved. But I don’t do that kind of planning.
So if somebody comes to me with those circumstances or they have a diminished capacity situation, which doesn’t mean they can’t plan, it just means they really need to do it a lot more carefully, I would recommend they speak with a specialist, somebody who’s just trained to work with seniors. Whereas somebody like a younger couple in their 50s, maybe they’re married, they have adult children. And they just want to first make sure they’ve done everything properly on all their assets, which people may overlook in estate planning. They often just say, what do I want in my Will? And that’s it. But I try to take a holistic approach and say, what are your assets and how are they titled so that I can let you know if we’re missing something. I can easily do a Will for you, but it may not be what you want or need. If you put specifics in your will, like I want to leave $10,000 to each of my grandkids. And then on your assets, you have one or two brokerage accounts and they all list your adult children. How does the Will kick in? If you have a beneficiary listed on an account, that account is going to get paid out directly to that beneficiary, no strings attached, regardless of what your Will or your Trust says.
I think looking at everything is really important. When I have somebody coming in and they’re 50, married, with adult children we’re going to take a really holistic approach. We’ll look at their assets and say, okay, maybe there’s only a few things you need to do to solidify your probate avoidance. Maybe a simple revocable trust in place for some real property or businesses. And then all of those foundational documents, the living documents that I talked about earlier, like Durable Power of Attorney, healthcare surrogate, Living Will. Many people think a Living Will is their Last Will and Testament. But rather it is for end of life decision making. As an example you’re in an end stage terminal condition or a persistent vegetative state, and whether or not you want to be artificially kept alive. Do you want your family to have to decide to end life support under those circumstances? Other issues might be relevant like Guardianship, HIPAA authorization. final disposition instructions regarding your preference for burial or cremation. All of those things are really important.
If somebody’s coming to me and they’re looking at retirement, I ask them, what brought you here today? And they often say, well, we’ve always known that we need to get an estate plan in place, but now that we’re retiring, we just wanna get that done. So we prepare all of those documents for them. And then we talk about the probate avoidance.
AMY:
So glad that you brought up the living documents as well. I know you mentioned that a second ago, and it feels like such an important piece to come back to. These are pieces where some people are familiar and others might not be so familiar unless they’ve experienced it with a loved one and dealt with these documents. So I’m so glad you covered that. This whole estate planning package as a much bigger process than most of us realize but it can save so much pain.
NICOLE:
Yes. I think that a lot of people, when they’re looking to hire an attorney are in very dire situation. They have an urgent need to hire an attorney. They have an immigration issue. They have a criminal issue. They have a marital issue. These are not happy circumstances in most cases. They had a personal injury issue. So hiring an attorney is a difficult decision for people to make. But hiring a estate planning attorney is not one of those emergency situations until it is. So we have people that come to us healthy, and they’re thinking about it. And we’ve had people who we’ve met with come back a year or two later. They are then finally ready to move forward. It took that long to go from, I’m thinking about this to, yes, I’m ready to get it done. But then we have people who call us all the time who say, I have a loved one who’s in the hospital and they’re not able to make decisions. I need to get a Power of Attorney. At that point, it may be too late.
It can be such a simple document when you’re meeting with them the first time. They’re like we just want make sure we have guardians appointed for my kids. I know nothing’s gonna happen to us, but that is important to us. And they don’t really place a lot of importance on some of those other documents. But then when they need it, it becomes so important. And the pricing changes dramatically. Pre-planning one of those individual documents can be relatively inexpensive initially but become several thousands of dollars if you’re in an emergency situation. It is not because we up-charge to create the document, but rather it’s because the document’s no longer possible. At that juncture you need to go to a court and say, judge, this person legally can’t make decisions anymore and nobody will talk to us because we don’t have a Power of Attorney. The hospital or the doctors won’t talk to us because we don’t have any medical documents. We have lots of people now who are in long-term relationships and they’re not married. And there’s no protections for them in terms of inheritance for sure, but also decision-making. Like I said, a lot of times we downplay the importance of these documents because they’re not things that we’re thinking about. But then when we need them, you know exactly what that document is, why you need it, who needs to see it so that you can take your next steps. It’s the bank, it’s the doctor, whoever. So anyway, I think I went off on a tangent there. But the Living Documents are very important. And for some people, like I said, when they’re first coming to me it’s because they want a simple Will, We talk about what their wishes actually are and whether or not if mostly they’re concerned about avoiding probate, the Will is probably second to the Living Documents. The Will kicks in after you’re already gone. But these other documents are important during your lifetime.
PAT:
So very good!
AMY:
So interesting too. Such a great explanation. And even just thinking through what this means to an adult. Where’s this class in college? Like just in the same way financial literacy is becoming more important. I feel like this should be a critical module also. This is a course in and of itself where everyone coming out of college or even high school should understand what is the Living Will? What does that even mean? Because at least for me, I was blessed. My Mom was a paralegal. Her career centered around law. I learned these terms around the dinner table just because it was important to her and she understood the importance. But people who don’t have that informal education are at such a disadvantage. It’s almost like it’s happenstance or it’s what your parents did. I’m so grateful for your outreach. That feels not only like an act of service in your profession, but an act of service outside your profession, which I hope is yielding dividends back into your practice.
PAT:
Nicole, I have a quick question for you. Have you found that things are fairly similar from state to state? I think I mentioned that I’m in Colorado and you all are in Florida. Are there definite differences? Your suggestion is make sure when you address these issues specifically for your respective State?
NICOLE:
Yes, it is important that it’s state specific because every state is going to have their own guidelines for what is acceptable in a Power of Attorney. They may have different probate rules. I’m only licensed in Florida, so I can really only speak to Florida law. However, I’ve also handled ancillary probates where Florida was not where the primary probate was. The primary probate was in another state, but Florida had an ancillary probate. And not every state, probate isn’t as scary of a process in every state.
In Florida, there’s no estate taxes. When we’re doing the foundational planning that I mostly do, we’re not worried about avoiding taxes. For 99% of people, that’s not a problem. The federal exemption is really high right now. So most people don’t have that concern. They just need to minimize or eliminate probate, plan for their loved ones who are inheriting, protect minor beneficiaries, make sure they have all the incapacity planning in place.
So it is really important that you have the right documents for the state that you’re in. And also just because when you think about what you’re trying to avoid by having these documents, you’re trying to avoid any problems. Another example – if the bank sees your Power of Attorney and they say, well, in our state, you have to initial this, and this, and I don’t see it, and I’m going to have to send this up to legal.
And we’re not gonna do anything until we get it approved because it’s not customary. And in Florida, because, you know, lots of protections for fraud and abuse and elder abuse. Our Power of Attorney documents are really long and we do have to initial in all the right places.
I remember my grandmother who spent her lifetime and her career in financial services. She always used a simple power of attorney, a one page document. I remember when she saw the documents that we use now, she said, that’s much too much power. That’s too much to give somebody. And I said, well, it is really because the document that you were using was a blank check. At least this one says, I’ve gone through each and every one of these powers and this one’s okay and this one isn’t. And so I think that the longer documents are a bit more burdensome initially and maybe even scary looking, but ultimately in the long run, they help people. But again, every state is different. So you may live in a state where you can have a simple Power of Attorney document and that’s perfectly acceptable. But if you brought that here to Florida you’d have some big problems.
PAT:
Okay. Thank you.
AMY:
What do you see as some of the common mistakes? And I know you mentioned a couple of them already, but are there any others that you almost want to prevent? Those kind of hiccups that people might inadvertently set themselves up for?
NICOLE:
Yeah, I think one is a lot of times people may not value what they don’t truly understand. And so we have a lot of people who try to do it themselves. And this is an area where you don’t know and your family won’t know that something is wrong or defective until it’s too late. All too often in the DYI case, people are not submitting their documents and posting them somewhere. They’re signing them; putting them in an envelope, or a folder and putting it away until sometime when they’re needed. So it’s really problematic for people to try to do it themselves or to do a cookie cutter package. It’s a lesson that I’ve learned over and over and over again.
One of the things that I love to do is to try to simplify things for people. And I’m a people pleaser. So I’m always trying to make it sound like it’s going to be easy. But you get into people’s situations. There’s some things that cannot be simplified. And so as much as I want to make it less challenging for people, there are family dynamics and things outside of legal documents that make things a little sticky.
I’ve had a DIY Will that inadvertently disinherited most of the person’s children and left everything to one child and grandchild. I’ve had a Will that was a DIY Will. Actually there were two of them, but neither one of them were executed properly. And one of them had a big X in the section that said Residuary Estate something along those lines. So in the section that said I want this property to go to these people – that person said he didn’t have very much. He wrote out everything that he had and who they wanted it to go to and then in the next section for residuary estate he ex it out. What that means is only those specific things are going to those specific people and if he forgot anything it’s going to the Residuary which he’s exed out. And in his particular case, it’s a wrongful death. So a big claim, potentially, that now is going according to the default rules. He obviously didn’t want that because he named all these other people who he wanted to inherit assets in this other section. And now, in this particular case, lots of elderly siblings who were in poor health became the default beneficiaries. And not that he didn’t love those beneficiaries, but some of them were on need-based benefits. They could not receive the money. Some of them actually passed away during the process. So this is kind of like one of those worst case scenarios, but like just everything that you could think of in that case happened. And this was somebody who was not married and had no kids. So that’s a real-life case!
PAT:
Goodness.
NICOLE:
And I’ve had cases where there’s no Will. And one case in particular where there was no Will and the person had moved here when she was very young. She was married, and her spouse’s family was really her immediate family. That’s who she spent her holidays with. But she had a huge family overseas that she had sort of distance herself from her whole lifetime. So when she passed away, her spouse’s family came to probate the estate and come to find out nothing was going to them. Everything was going to these people. Most of them had never even met this person. So that’s another situation where just not feeling it was necessary to have a Will means that people you don’t know, potentially people you don’t like, will inherit or those default rules will kick in.
And another pitfall that I see is with real property. And deeds are one of the things that I don’t love to deal with other than we’re doing a deed to a Trust, something like that. But sometimes what people will do is if they’re in a 55 plus community and they’ll say, all my neighbors are saying that they’re putting their kids on their deed because their kids are adults and they don’t want them to go through probate. But what people aren’t talking about is whether they did it professionally. What all the language in the deed says. It’s not always as simple as just adding your child to the deed. So what I have seen happen is somebody goes to a notary in the building. They draw up a quitclaim deed. They just copy one and they add the name. And then what happens is they give away 50% of their present interest in the property to their child. They lose their homestead exemption, which is a big deal in Florida because that caps your property taxes from skyrocketing every year. We’ve seen prices double, triple in our area over the last few years. So that’s major. And then they also lose control over it.
I had somebody come to me in that situation. She said, I had my neighbor do the deed and I had two condos. We added my child to both of them, but now my child isn’t talking to me and I want to take those deeds and put them into Trust. Well now you can’t. Because now your child owns half of them. And the biggest kicker is the whole point of that was to avoid probate, but that 50% that they retained is still subject to probate.
So they only have control now over that 50%. So when we talk about adding people to a deed, we’re not talking about that situation, which is just throwing somebody’s name on there. We’re talking about passing title upon somebody’s death. So you retain your present interest in the property, but upon your passing, it goes to whomever you choose.
And then of course if you do a Deed to Trust, you don’t have to spell out who’s getting what. You just say I want this Deed to go to my Trust. Then your Trust is private and says who’s getting what.
AMY:
Those stories are such powerful illustrations how good intentions can go gone wrong. Especially on the DIY method. You mentioned the trust piece and how that can simplify. Is there any kind of high level information that would be helpful for people to hear about trusts?
NICOLE:
Well, I think that they can be for everyone. They don’t have to be just reserved for the wealthy. Now the wealthy use them differently. They may have multiple trusts. Because they have different goals in that they may be sheltering assets. They may be leaving things to charities. But when I talk about trust, I’m talking about a Living Trust, a Revocable Living Trust, which means that during your lifetime, you are the creator of the Trust, you are the manager of the Trust, and you are the beneficiary of the Trust. Meaning business as usual for you. Nothing changes. Use your social security number. It’s not like opening up an LLC where you have to report on it every year. It’s just a private document that says what happens if you’re no longer able to manage the Trust yourself and after you pass away.
A lot of times I say, if we put it simply, a trust solves a lot of the problems that people think a Will solves, Because people think if they have a Will that their family can just take the will to the bank or to the property appraiser. They have this Will and now everything can pass. No, the Will goes to the judge. Then the judge examines it or the court examines it, and decides that it’s valid and admits it. And then the process begins formally. So all the fees that are associated with probate, the timeline, everything, that begins once the Will is admitted. But with a Trust, if you’ve named a successor trustee, that person can accept their role and start acting. It’s a private document. It doesn’t get published, recorded, e-filed anywhere. So your successor trustee steps in. If you’re living and you have some capacity issues, that could be during your lifetime, obviously. But after you’re passing, the trustee would step in and manage the trust. And the trustee is in a fiduciary role and they are managing the trust for the benefit of the beneficiaries. And the piece that a lot of people miss is that your trust has to be funded. What does that mean? That means that having the trust is not quite enough. That’s the legal infrastructure. We sometimes say that’s the backpack or the bowl. It’s empty, but it’s there. It’s created. To make it work for you, you have to put stuff inside of it. We don’t put stuff inside of it by writing into the trust, I have a bank account, I have an investment account, I have these assets. But those things change. Your bank could merge. You could close an account and open an account. Do you really wanna be amending your Trust formally every time you make a decision like that, like just opening up a bank account. The way that you fund the Trust is by retitling your assets. So for example, a piece of real property, a Deed to Trust, opening up a bank account is done in the name of the Trust.
You still use your social security number, but you open the bank account in the name of the Trust. You can name the Trust as a beneficiary on a life insurance policy, for example. If you have minor kids, maybe you’re a single parent and you have minor kids, and you want to make sure that the money’s managed by your mom or dad or sister or brother, whoever you trust, but you want to make sure it’s specifically earmarked for your kids.
A lot of times I have people tell me they didn’t know who to put, so they just put this person that they knew will do the right thing. And I say, not to go off on another tangent, but what happens if something happens to that person? They get married, divorced, they pass away, that money isn’t earmarked. So yes, I believe they will do exactly what you want them to do if everything remains perfect, but if you want that money to be earmarked for your kids, you gotta put it in a Trust.
So we have to fund the Trust to make it work for you. If you’re married, you can have a joint Trust. So spouses can both serve during their lifetime and then continue to serve after death. I’m trying to think of some of the other highlights. If you have minor children, you could put some guardrails in place. Meaning rather than that default age of inheritance of 18, you may want push it out to 30 or 25, 35, whatever the case may be. So you can delay distribution. What if you sa you still want the kids to have access to money for health, education, maintenance, support, the trustee will be able to make distributions for those things, but your child isn’t getting a check for their full inheritance until they reach that milestone that you’ve set.
PAT:
Super information!
AMY:
What a great education. I am beyond grateful for the time that you’ve spent with us today. If someone would like to reach out to you, what is the best way for people to get in touch with you?
NICOLE:
They can always visit our website, right? www. My name is spelled L-O-U-G-H-L-I-N, and then so loughlinlawpa.com. You can give us a call, 561-921-5751. You can always send me an email. I’ll list everything on my website so you can see that. And I also offer a free presentation. I do it a few times a month on a lot of what we talked about today. You know, going over the basics. I talk about how to protect your family and get peace of mind through simple estate planning. What do you need to know? What’s the difference between a Will and a Trust? What’s better for your family?
Now we make Trust sound pretty attractive when we talk about it. It’s not because we like doing Trusts more, but it’s because they do a little bit more. But I definitely meet people who are perfect candidates for Will packages only, and we do plenty of that in my firm also. So on my website, there’s a place where you can register for events and be part of a live recorded webinar.
AMY:
Great. Dad, do you have any other questions?
PAT:
Well, I just wanted to say I’m so looking forward to having this published because I’m going to listen to it numerous times. I mean, there was so much information. I’ve taken some notes and the repeat is going to be very beneficial to me. We’re headed for a senior living campus very soon so I look forward to share this information, Nicole, with these new friends that we’ve met. We’re going to get a lot of mileage out of all of this.
NICOLE:
I’m glad to hear that because I do want this topic to become mainstream. Not mainstream in that we want to go with all of these DIY options. I’ve expressed my issues with those, but because we want people to not be scared to pick up the phone and call an attorney like me, it’s not scary. I’m a real person with this. So it’s not like walking into a consultation where you’re looking to sue somebody or you’re trying to get a defense counsel because something bad has happened to you. This is a conversation like we’ve had today. So it shouldn’t be scary, it shouldn’t be taboo. We really normalize this in my family and among my friends.
Many of my friends are attorneys. So, you’d be surprised, but even my own husband, we had a conversation at the bank. We were doing some home improvement and we had to set up an account specifically for that project. And after we signed everything, I told the banker too, we wanted to update the beneficiary to be our Trust just in case. And my husband was so embarrassed. He was like nothing is going to happen. And I’m like, I can’t even believe that we’re having this conversation. I give people this advice every day, day in and day out and we’re even debating whether or not, we should put the loan into the Trust. He didn’t want to be a problem, you know? But it’s important.
But anyway, I’m glad you said that, Pat, like that you’re going to listen to this again, because I talk about this all the time and then here we are, my husband and I at the bank and questioning, questioning why we’re doing a certain thing.
AMY:
That is so powerful and thank you. This just normalizes this topic and illustrates our cultural desire. It’s not a norm yet and just to your point of just making it mainstream, making that normal; making that thoughtful and intentional; and good business – we can honor and plan for life’s what ifs. You’ve shared how there is a way to remove some uncertainty; remove some future worry. It’s like the question – what will your future self thank you for? Thoughtful estate planning is absolutely one of those. We will put all those links into the show notes for this show to make it easy for people to find you and find those events that you offer. And we are so grateful for this time, Nicole. And will watch what sort of conversations emerge. I could see us having you back if you’re open to it as people sort of find their way through some of this. And I hope that we hear some really great stories from the community as a whole of how is thoughtful estate planning really benefited others and maybe collectively start to swing the tide about this important topic.
PAT:
Good. Hear, hear.
NICOLE:
Thank you.