Legacy Assurance Plan: estate plannning

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Estate Planning to Achieve Your Unusual or Non-Traditional Estate Planning Goals

Summary: Everybody’s estate plan is a different from others’, to one degree or another. Many people have specific, unique or peculiar goals they’d like to accomplish through the legacy they leave behind. By obtaining a detailed and comprehensive estate plan, you can take full advantage of the law’s opportunity allowing to control your legacy and make sure that all of your planning objectives, both great and small, ordinary and unusual, are achieved.

We all have our quirks -- those little peculiarities that make each of us unique. Our quirks can play a role in many things that we do, including, sometimes, how we go about planning our estates. Some of us may have rather ordinary estate planning goals, such as splitting assets between one’s immediate family and/or closest friends. Other people have goals that are more… unique.

The man who invented the Pringles potato chip can left instructions that, as part of his final arrangements, he should be cremated and part of his ashes should be buried… inside a Pringles can. An aristocrat from Portugal who died in 2007 had an unusual plan, not for his final arrangements, but for the distribution of his assets. He had no spouse and no children but lots of wealth. The aristocrat underwent the proper procedural steps such that, when he died, his wealth went to… 70 strangers whose names he selected from a telephone book.

A wealthy 19^th Century man from Ohio decided to leave much of his estate for the benefits of animals. Specifically, according to a 2013 report in the Naples, Florida newspaper, his plan called for his wealth to be put toward the creation of a house for cats that was “complete with dormitories, an infirmary, a rectory, rat holes, roofs for climbing and areas for ‘conversation.’” There was even an auditorium where the cats could listen to live accordion music. Famed 1960s signer Janis Joplin had a much less elaborate but decidedly unusual estate planning goal: her plan set aside the sum of $2,500 for a rousing funeral party – a “final gesture of appreciation and farewell.”

Chances are, your estate planning goals aren’t as exotic as a resort home for felines or leaving your wealth to strangers you’ve chosen at random. Nevertheless, it is entirely possible that your planning goals do include some highly personalized elements. Maybe you have some very particular asset distributions you want to make to specific beneficiaries. Perhaps you want your family to have the bulk of your wealth, but you want your mail carrier to have your collection of “joy buzzers” because you know he’s a hug aficionado of novelty toys.

Alternately, maybe you have specific and detailed desires for your final arrangements. Some people just want to express their wishes for where they will be buried and/or who will deliver the eulogy. Other people desire to script almost everything from eulogies to pall bearers to music to… nearly everything associated with their funeral and final arrangements.

Whatever your specific or unusual goals are, your comprehensive and detailed estate plan is the way to make sure those objectives are carried out. With a detailed will or will and revocable living trust, you can take control of your legacy and ensure that, even if you have very unusual estate planning goals you want to accomplish, those goals can be realized.

Your plan helps you in two ways: it expresses your intentions and helps prevent your loved ones being left “in the dark.” Sometimes, the loved ones you leave behind may fail to do exactly what you want, not because their reject your wishes, but because they don’t know exactly what your preferences are. With your plan, you can save them the stress that often comes with uncertainty. Your passing will be difficult for them. It will be even more so if they have to guess what your estate planning preferences were.

Your plan also avoids the perils of intestacy. If you leave no plan, then the law will simply look for your closest legal relatives (meaning, typically, a spouse and/or children) and divide everything you own amongst them. If your desires deviate from that cookie-cutter type approach in any way, then you need a plan. Your plan can ensure that you not only provide for your spouse and/or kids, but that all of your goals relative to all of your assets can be realized, even if those objectives are unique or unusual.

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.

This article written and published by:

Legacy Assurance Plan

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Thursday, August 10, 2017

A Real Life Story | The Potential Pitfalls of Non-Probate Transfers of Real Estate

Summary: For some people, transfer-on-death deeds can be a quick, low-stress and inexpensive way to transfer a property and avoid probate. They can also, though, create pitfalls that can trap and harm an unwary person. While these types of deeds can be a useful part of some estate plans, for others, there may be better ways of avoiding probate with other techniques.

Today, more than ever, state laws allow people to transfer more assets than ever through the use of pay-on-death and transfer-on-death beneficiary designations. Laws allowing for transfer-on-death designation deeds, which were rare just a decade ago, exist in many states now.

These deeds can be helpful. They can also be problematic. A case from Missouri showed this in action. A man and a woman acquired their home in 1946, taking title as husband and wife. In 1989, Missouri’s Legislature enacted a “Nonprobate Transfer Law” that allowed for the creation of beneficiary deeds (a/k/a transfer-on-death deeds) in that state. Four years later, in 1993, this couple took advantage of the new law and created just such a deed, naming a nephew as the beneficiary.

So far so good. However, less than a year later, in 1994, the couple decided to transfer their home to the wife individually. This deed, unbeknownst to them, would create substantial legal issues later. “Later” came in 2009 when the wife, who had outlived her husband, died. The administrator of the wife’s probate estate sought to include the property in the woman’s probate estate. The nephew contested this action, arguing that the 1993 deed and the couple’s deaths made the property his outright.

The question left for the courts to sort out was, in essence, what effect did the 1994 deed have on the beneficiary designation created the year before? Ultimately, the Missouri Court of Appeals ruled that, when the couple transferred the deed from both of them to the wife alone, that transaction triggered a termination of the beneficiary designation they’d created the year before. This meant that the property went into the woman’s probate estate. It didn’t go to the nephew and it didn’t avoid probate.

We don’t know what the couple’s intentions were toward the nephew when they created the 1994 deed. Maybe they did intend to wipe away the beneficiary designation. Or, maybe, they created this deed as some sort of attempt at Medicaid planning and never intended for it to have any negative impact on the nephew or the probate-avoidance plan they set up in 1993. At best, their assets went where they wanted, but only after an arduous, time consuming and probably expensive court case. At worst, their home went through an arduous, time consuming and probably expensive court case AND the home failed to go where they wanted it to go.

One possible way to avoid the pitfalls that can sometimes come with transfer-on-death deeds is with a revocable living trust. Like a transfer-on-death deed, a properly executed and funded living trust will avoid probate and allow for the relatively swift and typically inexpensive transfer of assets. Your living trust can help you to avoid unintended consequences that come with transfer-on-death deeds like unintentional disinheritance, unintentional distributions to ex-spouses or, as was the case here, a potentially unintentional termination of a beneficiary designation.