Meet a Brislawn Lofton "General"

In my practice I rely on a number of good people. Let me introduce you to one of them, Maggie, who is one of our "Generals." While ancient Chinese emperors buried themselves with an army of clay soldiers to serve them in the afterlife, we actually have a living and breathing example here to help YOU.

Maggie is our Executive Paralegal. She oversees our ClientCare program to maintain the comprehensive work we do with you, your family, and perhaps your business. She is a caretaker by nature, and she loves her small farm and the animals that share it with her and with Barb, her sister. 

Maggie is brave, too, just like a soldier.  I remember one sunny weekend in Idaho on a jeep trip with Maggie and her son Josh.  They were on a knife-like ridge with a thousand foot drop to the side... and Maggie was driving like it was a Sunday church run!  It was one example of how fearless she can be.

Like all our staff, Maggie is only a phone call or email away, and I'm fortunate that she knows how to make your experience with our firm a pleasant one.

As you work with Maggie, keep in mind that she is singularly committed to help you organize your estate issues. She is an expert in funding trusts, settling a probate or administering a trust following the passing of a loved one. Best of all, she and the rest of our staff will help you keep your planning up to date as things change in the normal course of life.

Every member of our staff at Brislawn Lofton serves as a "General."  We are the Special Forces of estate and business planning, a highly experienced team each one of which can get things done that matter to you.  And, we have each others' back and count on each other every single day.

Call Maggie at (425) 803-9500 to say hi, and feel free to ask her about ClientCare… it is an inexpensive and "on purpose" way of keeping your peace of mind intact so you can sleep well at night.

WHEN GOOD ESTATE PLANS GO BAD

Think of your life as a trip. To get where you are going with less effort, let's say you purchase a car. You spend a lot of time figuring out the make and model. Then you buy it and drive it off the lot and forget about it… right?

Nope. To get the best results out of your car, a major purpose, you change your car's oil every 3000 – 5000 miles. You also invest in maintenance and preventative care throughout the life of your vehicle. If you do not do this you are likely to suffer catastrophic failure at an inconvenient time, or worse.

An estate plan is analogous to your car, since it transports people and causes you care about powered by a lifetime of dreams, work, and assets. Great plans, like great cars, should come with warranties and a dedicated service staff to provide diagnostics and service before they are needed urgently, seems to me.

So what does your attorney, CPA, financial planner offer in terms of a warranty for your planning? Hope you call some day? Wait for the phone to ring?

Ask yourself, how do you know that your plan is current? Does it create Success On Purpose? Do you Sleep Well at Night? A glaring example of this uncertainty is that this year, with the sunset of EGTRRA (Economic Growth and Tax Recovery Act) in 2011, and the current tax code in 2010, many families and spouses face potential estate planning disaster.

Our firm developed CLIENTCARE as the best estate plan warranty you can buy, provided by our top estate planning team. Our clients may select an appropriate maintenance level with consideration of their budget. Our annual maintenance program includes "tune-up" services, like reviews and updates on estate planning documents. Even better, our CLIENTCARE members are entitled to call a paralegal or attorney into our office for that "one quick question" for free depending on which level they subscribe for. For some clients, questions needing research or even a meeting might be covered too.

Each year we provide complimentary seminars, workshops and newsletters to help maintain an estate plan, educate fiduciaries, and ensure that everything is simple and easy for those you love when the time comes for them to put the estate plan into action.

Another way that we continue to protect our members through CLIENTCARE is with the DocuBank card. Members are enrolled you in this electronic registry which stores healthcare legal documents such as living wills, durable powers for health care, burial and funeral instructions, privacy waivers and the like that are then available day or night to your health care providers worldwide. We renew DocuBank membership as part of CLIENTCARE -- to make sure our clients are still protected.

So, participation in our CLIENTCARE program has one purpose - to create peace of mind. A plan is kept up to date, and our clients won't leave unfinished business for loved ones with the confidence that we are here for them as their estate planning firm whenever needed. Always.

Now you know what we do for our clients. Our ClientCare Coordinator is Maggie Allen, and she is ready, willing and able to sign any of our clients up or to discuss benefits at any time. Call her at 425-803-9500 or email her at maggie.allen@brislawnlofton.com to sign up.

Even Hippos Require Succession Planning

Seattle zoo's oldest animal euthanized3/26/2010 8:41:42 AM
Associated Press

SEATTLE — Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo has euthanized its oldest animal — a 47-year-old hippo named Gertie — because of normal, age-related physical decline.

The 5,000-pound (2,268-kilogram) hippo has lived at the zoo since 1966. She had osteoarthritis and despite medication, zoo officials say she was having trouble getting around and was in pain.

Zoo officials say hippos can live up to 49 years in zoos. Their life expectancy is 45 years in the wild.


This short news article was followed by a longer one that covered the ways that the zoo developed as "succession plans" to prepare for changes in their hippo community. It is telling that even zoo keepers face the same issues that we face as business owners – no one lives forever, so to be prepared we must simply tackle the nitty-gritty of succession planning.
For publicly held businesses, succession planning is often the major focus of the Board of Directors. For a family-owned business it is rarely done in advance, resulting in squabbles, liquidity and tax problems, and loss of the key family resource for pennies or nothing.
In today's economy, facing serious changes in the estate tax environment, business owners do not have the luxury of avoiding a succession plan for management and ownership. How many of us will take the required action to go see our lawyer, our CPA, to design a plan? Think about it.

WHY LEGALZOOM.COM IS BETTER THAN AN ATTORNEY

Shocked to hear me, an attorney, utter sacrilege like that? Well, they claim that the documents are prepared by "top attorneys" and that you can "do it yourself" in minutes, for only a few dollars. You can be your own attorney without spending three years in law school, taking the bar, and practicing to learn the real ropes!

I recently had an opportunity to check out some LegalZoom documents. One of my friends did some Wills with simple trust planning for his kids. Each spouse left the estate to the other, but if both were deceased, they had a Common Trust for all kids until they turned 21, then money would split into shares that each child would receive in equal installments at 24, 27, and 30. They even had powers of attorney and all the trimmings.

The documents looked pretty "legal." My friend did the plan himself, in an hour or two on the weekend, and only spent a few hundred dollars. He did this rather than go to an attorney for budget reasons and scheduling difficulty given his business and family activities. That is far better than not covering this important issue, so kudos to my friend.

My take on his efforts? I thought that the documents were good from a simplistic technical perspective. I actually kind of liked them as they were well-written and clean.

How did that work compare to what I or one of my estate planning attorney colleagues would do? They were simple. They were not elegant. They did not demonstrate insight, personalization, awareness of core values important to my friends, how these would be woven into the legal documents, or any meaningful guidance into how a trust would be used by guardians of children to raise them to become the adults their parents would be proud of… How about asset protection for adult children to protect inheritance against divorce or bankruptcy? Forget it.

My friend, his wife and I went through a counseling session to identify their goals and concerns. In that session we identified a surprising number of concerns, ideas, and issues that were simply not part of the LZ Will plan.

Result? I was retained to do a comprehensive plan to address all the things that were not part of the LZ plan. We also looked over their investments, retirement planning, insurance coverage, and the separate inheritances each was to get from their own grandparents and parents. I reached out to my friend's advisers and got their help in relooking all these things to make sure that they were properly handled too.

I believe that the practice of law by a good attorney is about far more than preparation of documents. It is about listening, discerning, and identifying core values. It is about understanding what keeps clients awake at night. Then, it is about pulling together resources to resolve those concerns and to put a plan in place. But, even more important, it is about working to keep that plan tuned up so that as things change, it changes. Documents are simple. Wisdom is harder to come by.

 

Need some documents quick, that you pull together yourself? LegalZoom.com might just be the ticket for you.

Want customized solutions built on experience that you can have confidence in? Give your attorney a call, a check, and a hug when they serve you well.

Just a Little Conversation…

Americans just do not like to discuss estate planning. Supposedly 7 out of 10 of us have no plan. Of the 3 who do, what are the chances that the plan is up to date?

A friend of mine, Michael Stuart, just sent me this link to an article in the NY Times talking about talking. I wanted to share it with you as it paints the picture of what happens with no plan, and even how to open a conversation about one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/business/04ESTATE.html?emc=eta1

When I think about the plans that I have helped clients create, many stories come to mind. One recurring theme is a senior couple who own some investments and real property, with one of their adult children serving full-time as a caretaker. Other kids are not too involved in things… and the caretaker daughter pretty much has her hands full with children of her own and helping out the folks. In this situation, the adult daughter has a full time job or two already… and no outside means of support.

Many parents want to treat children "equally." But what do you do when there is only so much to go around, and the cost to one kid (the helper) is simply going to be too high for that to even remotely be fair? Parents must first plan for their care, then consider being "fair" rather than "equal" to those who follow.

It's often the right thing to do… but without some conversation, and openness, it will likely have a huge cost in terms of relationships down the line. And ignoring this dynamic is unlikely to provide a better result.

TAKING A POSITIVE STEP

If you really get stressed about estate or retirement planning, why not relax and yet learn about both? Here are some timeless movie picks:

 

It's A Wonderful Life Do you ever wonder if you "matter?" Can one person make a significant difference in this life? Jimmy Stewart finds out in this holiday classic.

Brewster's Millions What happens when you inherit $300 million from the uncle you never knew? Richard Pryor finds out in this hilarious "spend it ($30 million in 30 days) or lose it" comedy.

Little Big League A grandson inherits the Minnesota Twins from his grandfather. This one's a hoot.

Tuesdays With Morrie Jack Lemmon is a retired college professor with Lou Gehrig's disease, spending each Tuesday passing on life's lessons to a former student.

Sense & Sensibility A father leaves his estate to his son and tells him to "take care of my other family too." How hard could it be to determine what four women need to live on? One woman sets up her estate to discourage a behavior, but then gets the opposite result. The law of unintended consequences prevails…

Body Heat William Hurt drafts a Will containing a technical flaw which causes it to fail… Bet you can't wait to see how this one works out.

Changing Lanes A "simple" power of appointment (by which you allow someone to tinker with your estate plan) proves to be a devastating tool in the wrong hands. Such a power is used here to disinherit underprivileged children in New York.

On Death and Taxes

My mom passed away last night. Although expected, it was still a shock to the emotional system. At times like this I take great comfort in her pride in me that I became an attorney. She enjoyed our discussions about right, wrong, and WHY we Americans do what we do as a society. In memory of my mom, I want to share some thoughts on wealth transfer taxation.

Perhaps nothing so incites many people as the thought of paying a "death tax." Some folks are for it. I think about taxation on the transfer of wealth pretty often, because while I believe in providing money for government to do its job, I also espouse the notion of free will and the ability for each of us to move capital freely and as we see fit.

Two close friends and great conceptual thinkers, Bob Keebler, CPA and Jonathan Mintz, J.D., directed me to a very interesting paper from the IRS titled Federal Taxation of Inheritance and Wealth Transfers. It's available online at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/inhwlttr.pdf.

This thoughtful study, written in 1997, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of an increased scope of transfer taxes and presents the history of thinking about such since the formation of our country. Here is an abstract:

"For most of the 20th century and at key points throughout American history, the Federal government has relied on estate and inheritance taxes as sources of funding. Central to both historic and current debate over the role of inheritance in democratic society is the divergent characterization of inheritance as either a "right" or a "privilege." This paper provides an understanding of these arguments and of the history surrounding the development of the modern American transfer tax system, as well as a foundation for evaluating current debates and proposals for changes to that system."

Note that this article comes from the Statistics of Income (SOI) Division of the IRS; they have very interesting statistics about estate and gift taxes, among other things, at http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/index.html.