Legacy Assurance Plan: celebrity estate plan

Showing posts with label celebrity estate plan. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Another Celebrity Death and Another Lesson We Should All Take Away With Regard to Estate Planning

Summary: Estate planning experts often use the well-publicized reports of the estate plans of celebrities (or celebrities’ lack of estate plans) to teach important lessons that we all can learn. Sometimes it’s the downsides of intestate succession, the perils of a failure to engage in plan updates or the problems presented by overlooking the vital step of trust funding. The recent sudden death of another music celebrity serves as a reminder of another kind: the essential importance of avoiding the trap of procrastination when it comes to estate planning, as none of us know how much time we have left, so none of us can afford to procrastinate taking control of our legacies and protecting our loved ones.

There are many ways celebrity estate plans have gone wrong. Doing nothing and leaving one’s estate to the intestate succession system (as Prince did) can often create complication, confusion and a wealth of other unintended (and often undesired) consequences. Getting a plan but then failing to update it for decades can also cause significant problems and potentially thwart your true goals. When Whitney Houston died, her will was 19 years old and had never been updated at all since its execution. Michael Jackson engaged in comprehensive estate planning, but then failed to fund the trust that was created as part of his plan.

In other situations, though, news reports about celebrities can offer extremely important lessons about estate planning even when we know nothing about that star’s plans. Take, for instance, rock singer and songwriter Tom Petty. A Los Angeles Times music critic and reporter interviewed Petty in late September, shortly after his band ended their 2017 concert tour. Petty and the reporter discussed the many upcoming goals the singer had for himself, like producing an album for an up-and-coming band, working on his SiriusXM radio show and spending more time with his family.

Then, on October 2, Petty abruptly died of a heart attack. The Times writer’s article, originally intended to focus on the singer’s work, instead focused heavily on just how incredibly sudden and shockingly unexpected Petty’s death was. Petty was 66 and had gone through a battle with drugs in the past, but appeared to be in good health and nowhere near close to death.

So far, the media has not published any reports about the specifics of Petty’s estate plan, such as whether or not he had one or, if he did, what it looked like. In many ways, though, the estate planning lesson of Tom Petty has little to do with his legal documents themselves. Petty was a man with plans and goals. He had music projects lined up and also had personal plans, like making up for lost time with his 4-year-old granddaughter. Few if any people (certainly, no one in the media) saw him as anything other than man with many more productive years left to live.

Petty, in other words, was a lot like all of us. He was full of plans and dreams. He was full of family goals and professional objectives. He was full of life, until… one day, suddenly, he wasn’t. The education to take from the death of Tom Petty is that our remaining days, months and years are always going to be an unknown. As the saying goes, none of us is promised tomorrow.

So, when it comes to estate planning, don’t wait. Too many people procrastinate getting a proper estate plan in place, for any of a variety of reasons. Part of that procrastination is often fueled by the belief that estate planning isn’t urgent but rather is something that CAN be put off. “I’ll do it later… it can wait.” Don’t make that mistake. Your good health today is not a guarantee of longevity into the future. Take steps now to ensure that your loved ones are protected and your legacy is secure.

This article is published by the Legacy Assurance Plan and is intended for general informational purposes only. Some information may not apply to your situation. It does not, nor is it intended, to constitute legal advice. You should consult with an attorney regarding any specific questions about probate, living probate or other estate planning matters. Legacy Assurance Plan is an estate planning services-company and is not a lawyer or law firm and is not engaged in the practice of law. For more information about this and other estate planning matters visit our website at www.legacyassuranceplan.com.

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Thursday, December 21, 2017

Jerry Lewis’s Estate Plan | Another Celebrity’s Passing Helps to Teach Everyone About Planning

Summary: We can learn a lot from famous estate plans. The estate plan of Jerry Lewis teaches both some positive and negative examples when it comes to disinheriting children. Regardless of the reasons why, parents are free to disinherit children but must be sure to structure their planning documents properly to carry out that goal. Lewis’s will’s clear language about his sons likely serves as a good example of how to accomplish disinheritance, while his will’s complete failure to mention Lewis’s illegitimate daughter may have the potential to cause problems and/or thwart Lewis’s planning goals.

For many people, they learn a lot by examples. The examples that provide them with education and information can be either positive ones or negative ones – in other words, they can be examples to emulate or they can be remembered as “what NOT to do.”

That is true of estate plans that make the news. Sometimes, famous estate plans offer lessons about what not to do. Famous singer Prince had no plan, which meant that his estate went through the intestacy process, and his wealth distributed to the closest of his legal relatives according to Minnesota law. Not only did that mean that he did not assert control over his cherished (and massive) catalogue of music that he’d created, it also opened the door to a large array of claims from people who were strangers to the singer but who claimed that they were his long-lost half-siblings and entitled to a cut of his fortune. This, in the eyes of many, might be an example of what not to do.

More recently, there is the estate of actor and comedian Jerry Lewis. Lewis, unlike Prince, did not leave the distribution of his wealth up to the whims of the Nevada Legislature. Back in 2012, Lewis created a will that stated his goals for the distribution of his wealth. That will was clear that Lewis’s five sons from his first marriage were to take nothing from his probate estate.

There may be many reasons why a parent disinherits a child. Perhaps the child is very wealthy and needs no help from his parent. Perhaps the relationship between parent and child deteriorated and the parent no longer felt emotionally motivated to leave an inheritance. Perhaps the child is notoriously poor with money and the parent fears the child will squander the inheritance. (In this last scenario, however, there are options, like planning with spendthrift trusts, to assist a child who is not good with money.)

Whatever the reason, once you decide your goals include disinheriting a child, it is important to do it clearly and unmistakably. Lewis’s will explicitly named his five sons and explicitly stated that he was intentionally disinheriting them. With clear language, you can eliminate or reduce the risks that your desires will be thwarted after your death.

Lewis’s will was not without possible shortcomings, though. In addition to the five sons he disinherited, Lewis had an adopted daughter whom he expressly left an inheritance in his will… and possibly one more child. That last child, an illegitimate daughter named Suzan, allegedly was the biological offspring of Lewis and a fashion model. According to some news reports, DNA tests show that Lewis is the father. Lewis’s will, however, makes no mention of Suzan whatsoever.

This could present a headache for the estate and for the named beneficiaries. That’s because the law has something called a “pretermitted heir” or an “omitted heir.” This rule says that, if you have a close legal relative (and “heir at law”) of whom you make no mention in your estate plan, it is possible for the courts to declare that you simply forgot, or omitted, that heir from your plan and award that person the amount she would have gotten under the intestacy rules. This can happen any time you simply leave out a close relative like a child. That’s why it is so important, when you are disinheriting a child, to do so carefully and clearly, like Lewis did with his sons but not with his biological daughter.

This article written and published by:

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Monday, October 23, 2017

Alan Thicke | More Lessons from Another Celebrity Estate Plan and its Problems

Summary: There can be a lot the general public can learn from the news reports of celebrities’ estates and estate planning. Recent reports related to the estate of actor Alan Thicke offer quite a bit of useful instruction. Getting a plan not only to protect your goals regarding your assets but also your children is extremely important, but so is making sure that all of your estate planning and estate planning-related legal documents have matching or consistent terms, to ensure that they form one unambiguous singular set of instructions regarding your legacy.

Alan Thicke was a skilled professional who earned credits as songwriter, talk show host and game show host. He is, of course, best known as a actor, especially for his role as a beloved TV dad on the 1980s sitcom Growing Pains. During his career, Thicke achieved considerable success and wealth.

In 2000, three years after his third and youngest son was born, Thicke created a living trust. The birth of a new child can be an excellent time to set up a complete estate plan if you don’t already have one. The desire to provide for your (newly enlarged) family can be an excellent motivator to overcome procrastination and get your affairs in order.

This can be especially true if when it comes to your littlest ones. Your will can allow you to name the person you want to serve as your minor child’s guardian if something happens to you and your child’s other parent. In Thicke’s case, according to a TMZ report, he drafted a will that named his brother as the guardian for Carter if both he and Carter’s mother died before the boy reached age 18.

Among the trust’s other provisions, that document dictated that his sons would receive their father’s ranch in Carpenteria, Cal., splitting equally among the three of them. According to a report in the entertainment trade publication Variety, Thicke’s plan may have had a problem. Before he married his third wife in 2005, he and his future bride created a prenuptial agreement. Prenuptial agreements can be beneficial contracts for some couples and they can be useful complements to an estate plan.

Of course, the key is to make sure that, to the extent that your prenup and your estate plan address the same property, that they are “on the same page” and are in agreement and work together in a consistent and non-contradictory way.

According to Thicke’s wife, that didn’t happen in his case. The prenup, she contended in her legal challenge to the living trust, stated that she was to receive five acres from the Carpenteria ranch. (The trust said she got nothing from that ranch other than the right to live there during her lifetime so long as she paid for all of the upkeep on the property, including the mortgage payments.)

So where did that leave this family? In court, with the sons filing a legal action in Los Angeles County Superior Court to enforce the terms of the living trust. They claimed in their court action that that the wife “claims that Alan repeatedly promised to leave the Ranch to her.”

So what can the rest of us learn from this unfortunate circumstance? Several things. Alan Thicke appears to have done some estate planning things well. He created a living trust to express his goals and preferences. He also created a will to make sure that he had named a guardian for his very young son.

His plan may also have had some problems. The information provided in the Variety report seems to raise the possibility that the living trust and Thicke’s prenuptial agreement he signed with his third wife may been fundamentally in conflict regarding the distribution of the Carpenteria ranch.

So, what can you do for your family? First, make sure that, when you get your affairs in order, they’re really in order. Make certain that all of your documents, including your living trust, your will, your beneficiary deeds, your pay-on-death accounts, your other non-probate transfers and your prenuptial agreement all are “in synch” to form one consistent narrative regarding your set of objectives. Second, make sure that you communicate. Sitting down with all of your family to explain carefully all of your desires for your legacy can sometimes minimize or eliminate conflict between family members, and may help avoid court challenges.