Attorney James Jones: [00:00:00] A few months ago, I got a call from a family in Total Crisis. Their father had passed away suddenly no will, no powers of fraternity, no written instructions. They didn’t know where to start. The bank accounts were frozen, the mortgage was overdue, and worst of all the siblings were fighting, not because they were greedy, but because they genuinely disagreed on what their dad would’ve wanted.
They were navigating grief, legal, red tape, and rising tensions all at the same time, and it’s frustrating because this was entirely preventable. Here’s the truth. I’ve been practicing estate planning in Washington for over 20 years, and I’ve seen how powerful it is when families prepare ahead and how devastating it can be when they don’t.
In today’s episode of Legacy Talk, I’m going to talk about 10 of the most important reasons not to wait to create and update your estate plan. Whether you’re young or old, single or married, wealthy, or just starting out, these reasons apply to you. So stick with me. It could be [00:01:00] one of the most important conversations you’ve had all year.
You are listening to the legacy talk podcast hosted by James A. Jones, attorney at law and founder of sound legacy law, PLLC in Tacoma. Attorney Jones is here to talk about how to best protect your family assets and well, pulling stories from his more than 20 years of helping families and business owners protect their assets, create their estate plans, preserve their wealth and plan for the future.
Nobody wants to think about estate planning, but life has a way of sneaking up on you and. And at any moment, something unexpected could happen that will leave you regretting not having acted sooner. So join attorney James A. Jones in the Legacy Talk podcast and together learn how to plan for your future today and have peace of mind tomorrow.
Attorney James Jones: Welcome to Legacy Talk. I am your host, James Jones. On today’s episode, we are talking about [00:02:00] don’t wait, 10 reasons to tackle your Estate Planning now. Now to expand on the story, this has stuck with me. A few months ago, I get a call from a woman named Sarah. We’ll call her Sarah, and she sounded completely overwhelmed.
Her father had passed away just a few days earlier and it was unexpected. He was only in his early sixties and generally healthy, and he is still worked. Sarah and her two brothers were trying to get organized. They knew their dad had a house, a couple of bank accounts, maybe some retirement assets, but there was nothing in place.
No will, no trust, no powers of attorney. No written instructions of any kind anywhere. They went to the bank to try to access his checking account where automatic payments for the mortgages and utilities were scheduled, but those accounts were frozen. Legally the bank couldn’t do anything without a court order.
Meanwhile, the mortgage company kept taking auto payments, and once that overdraft hit, they started calling with threats of late fees and [00:03:00] foreclosure. The family couldn’t even shut off his cable bill without a legal document. And this is where it got painful. One sibling believed that their dad wanted the house sold and the money split between the three.
Another thought he was meant to have the house or to leave it to one of the grandkids. Sarah, who had moved into the house with her dad to help him during his final year believed she should be allowed to stay in the house. That led to tensions. As you can imagine, emotions boiled over. At one point, one of the brothers hired his own attorney, and before long the whole thing turned into a contested probate. All while they were they were grieving the loss of their dad. I wish I could say that this is a rare occurrence, but it’s not. I’ve seen this pattern play out dozens of times. in Washington a family with the best of intentions, trying to do the right thing, but left scrambling because there was no estate plan in place. And the thing is this kind of conflict of an expense is totally avoidable.
That’s why I wanted to record the episode [00:04:00] today because these stories don’t have to happen. Even with the most basic estate plan, a will, a power of attorney, a healthcare directive, this family could have avoided most of the heartache and chaos that they experienced. So today we’re sharing 10 of the most important reasons not to wait to get your estate planning done.
These aren’t abstract legal concepts. They’re based on real people, real families, real consequences that I see every day in my office. So let’s get to it. Number one reason not to wait to do your estate planning is to avoid the cost and chaos of dying intestate What does it mean, James, to die intestate Dying intestate means you die without a will, and Washington and all states have these laws called Intestacy laws. And these laws dictate who gets your stuff. Washington’s intestacy laws don’t account for non-traditional families. They don’t account for stepchildren, they don’t account for close friends. They typically follow your family [00:05:00] tree. Intestate requires that you go through a grueling probate process and have to be appointed by the court as an executor and sometimes that executor that the court appoints may not be who you want to have as executor. And without a will the probate process can be longer, more difficult than otherwise, so avoid probate. Avoid having to do an intestate probate.
Number two, reason why you don’t want to wait to do your estate planning is to protect your minor children. As I have talked about before in this podcast, if you go back, kids can’t have assets in their name, particularly titled assets like bank accounts or real estate. A will is where you would nominate guardians.
They can’t take care of themselves if they’re under 18. They can’t even sign their name legally. If you nominate your guardian in a will for your kids, the court doesn’t change that, right? Don’t leave this decision up to the court or a judge that’s unfamiliar with your family. Without any direction there may be a fight between relatives over who and sh should [00:06:00] and could raise your kids, and because kids can’t have assets, like I said, your plan can create trust so that those assets can be managed until they’re old enough to manage themselves. Right? You don’t want to have a three-year-old or a 5-year-old, or a 10-year-old or a 17-year-old.
Or an 18-year-old usually, or a 21-year-old, maybe even, you don’t want them to even get assets that they’re gonna blow because all those ages are suspect with regard to financial maturity. So trust or great benefit for kids to hold those assets and have someone in charge of those that has more discretion and life experience. Number three reason. Health care crises happen without warning. Accidents, strokes, serious illnesses can render someone incapacitated instantly. A durable power of attorney lets someone that you trust, manage your finances, pay your bills, deal with healthcare decisions and advanced directives.
Let you document your wishes for end of life care, [00:07:00] and avoid set making your family have to go through. I’m guessing as to what you wanted to have happen. Like do you want your plug pulled? I guess, do you wanna receive nutrition and hydration? Do you wanna donate any organs? Those kinds of things.
Number four, reason not to avoid your estate planning. Avoid unnecessary probate even though Washington probate is not the worst one in the country. It’s not the worst. It’s not the best. It’s not the worst though. There’s states worst, even though it’s not the worst as some states like California or Ohio’s pretty bad. I have a friend, colleague in Ohio, and it’s difficult, like they have to get court orders for everything.
They can’t even get paid until the end. Probate still costs money. It still takes time, and it still is public records. So nosy neighbor, Judy, or whatever, Sally, I don’t know which name you wanna name, your nosy neighbor. Karen, I don’t know, can come and stick her nose in there and see what you had. You can use revocable living trusts to avoid [00:08:00] probate.
You can do things like transfer on death deeds. You can make sure your beneficiary designations are up to date to keep these assets of yours out of probate, and planning in advance gives you the flexibility to balance. How you want to do it, right? Do I want to have things go through a trust? Do I wanna just make sure it’s beneficiary designations?
Do I want to transfer my house at death via deed, which would be like an operation of law transfer? There’s lots of ways to do it.
I personally think the revocable trust is the best way. If There’s a plug. We’ll have to do another episode on the Revocable trust. There’s a bunch of episodes on the revocable trust on this Legacy Talk podcast.
If you go back and look, you’ll see them. Number five, keeping the peace, ambiguity, and outdated documents often lead to disputes between relatives and estate plan that you put in place and maintain an update and review that you clearly state what your intentions are, who gets what? Who’s in charge. When they get it, and how communicating with your loved [00:09:00] ones about your plan can reduce surprises intention. A couple weeks ago I did an episode about talking to your family about estate planning. Do it? Yes.
Number six. Incapacity planning isn’t just for the elderly. Guess what? Younger people have accidents too. Sometimes they have medical crisis.
If you become incapacitated without documents, your family may have to go to court for a guardianship.
Listen to episode 61, I just did that talks about worst case scenario with a lady named Carol who had fingernails looking like she was in the Guinness Book of World Records. You don’t want to have that happen to you. An estate plan that you draft and that you create and that you review regularly ensures that your wishes are honored and relieves your loved ones of stressful decisions, right? Number seven. Tax planning. Washington has an estate tax. We’re one of those great states that has its own estate tax. I can’t wait for the ability to pay this estate tax down the [00:10:00] road. Anyway, washington’s estate tax is very low, by the way. It’s much lower than the federal one, and it doesn’t allow you to use it if you don’t you it when you die.
Okay? I’m not gonna get into the portability of this thing. So if you die and you’re a married couple, you gotta shelter, your spouse’s tax credit, or you lose it. Does that make sense to you? if you wanna learn more about that, I did an episode on tax planning a couple weeks ago too. Check it out or call me.
Planning tools like credit, shelter, trust, gifting strategies, life insurance trusts. Life insurance planning to pay your taxes can help, but don’t just take, get life insurance. I’m gonna get this policy and I’m gonna pay all my taxes with it when I die. Don’t forget that that policy counts against your taxable estate.
If you don’t do it right, I don’t know that you’re gonna go take that strategy just by listening to a two second clip on a podcast. But if you are that kind of person, give me a call. And we’ll talk about the right way to do it. Even modest estate today in Washington can grow into taxable states. The exemption’s 2.1 million and change [00:11:00] 2.1 million in Washington is not that much considering our housing prices. If you’ve worked and had a 401k, if you’ve got life insurance, if you’ve saved even reasonably well, you might have a taxable estate. ‘ cause we’ve got good real estate here.
And if you’ve got a small business, you gotta think about that. Your small business is worth more than you think for estate tax purposes. The number eight reason not to wait to get your estate planning done is blended families require extra care. We wanna make sure that we’re dealing with the community property that we have and the separate property that we have if we’re in a blended family, that means like your husband and wife or spouses are a second marriage or something like that, right?
With separate kids. They come in with assets. They acquire assets during their marriage, so some of their assets are community property, which means joint. Some of their assets are separate property, which means they came in with them at the marriage.
Making sure that stuff’s designated and dialed in is very important without a clear plan. stepkids are [00:12:00] often excluded and sometimes surviving spouses could be unintentionally shortchanged. Most times your own kids, if you are the one that dies first, could be shortchanged if you don’t plan for it, right?
Okay. You can customize trust to provide for a second spouse during their lifetime while preserving kids’ assets for later. That’s the most effective way to do it. Basically putting all the assets into a surviving spousal trust. And having that money last there so that when that spouse dies, your kids from a previous marriage or relationship we’ll get something, right.
Alternatively, they might get nothing, right? And I just did an episode on this too, like I just did this episode two week or two ago. Check it out, check it out. Number nine. Asset titling and beneficiary designations change over time. We wanna make sure that our bank accounts or retirement plans. Real estate that we have all in line with our current estate plan.
Bank accounts, if you have a trust, should be in the trust Retirement accounts. You wanna make sure that the [00:13:00] beneficiaries of the way you want it, is your spouse on there or your kids on there. Did you create trust for your kids? Do you wanna name the kids’ trust as the beneficiary of retirement plans? Is your real estate in the trust?
Right? Make sure that happens. You wanna make sure that you’re changing these things or reviewing them at least during life events. When you get married, if you get divorced, if someone is born, if someone dies, it’s easy to make old beneficiary Designation is obsolete, and old provisions in a trust or a will obsolete if someone dies.
You wanna make sure that you coordinate your review every two to three years. I’d say, to make sure that you are preventing unintended consequences across all of your apps assets. There’s so many people that I know that they might have an old 401k or something that they had from a previous job, and they never rolled it into an IRA or anything.
They have an old spouse on there as a beneficiary where they didn’t have kids at the time, so they’ve got their brother on there. You know, you wanna make sure that you’re up to date on that stuff. The number one [00:14:00] reason, which is the last reason, number 10. Peace of mind is a gift that you give yourself and your family. Okay? Clients often say the finishing their estate plan gives them a deep sense of relief. Plan today, peace of mind tomorrow. That’s what I say. That’s the logo. Your loved ones won’t have to guess or stress about your wishes during a time of grief if you have your estate planning done. A complete up-to-date estate plan is one of the most loving and responsible things that you can do for your family. It is a big, big, big boy thing, big girl thing. It’s an adult thing, right? It’s an adult thing. What I tell people is this, I was just on another friend’s podcast and Yes. well, what’s the number one thing you wanna tell people about estate planning?
And it wasn’t, oh, do a trust instead of a will or make sure that you have a power of attorney or you know, something like that. It was, make sure that you have it right. Make sure that you have your estate planning done. Don’t [00:15:00] wait. There’s no reason to wait. Start easy, right? Start simple. Do a will. Do a power of attorney.
You don’t have to have it all done at once, but start with something, right? Start with something. Even a basic plan is better than no plan, and you don’t want to end up like Carol, right? Who’s completely out of her mind with dementia, with crazy fingernails living in a house that no one’s taking care of her with nothing in place.
Subject to a court guardianship. You don’t want that.
You want to have your stuff in order, right? So don’t delay. Don’t delay. That’s it. It’s never too late until it’s too late, but it can be too late. Before you know it, you don’t know what’s gonna happen to you Tomorrow. You could walk out the street and get run over and that’s bad for you, bad for your family.
It’s preventable, right? Don’t wait. If anything you learned from this podcast today is what I learned from James today in a Legacy Talk podcast. Don’t wait to do your estate planning. Okay. [00:16:00] Join us next week for another great episode. I’d like to thank you for listening to today’s episode of Legacy Talk.
If you liked today’s episode and would like to learn more, please like and subscribe for more great content. I’ve been your host, James Jones, to your legacy.
Thank you for listening to the Legacy Talk podcast by attorney James A. Jones. If you found today’s episode helpful, we ask that you like and follow us on all major platforms so you don’t miss out on the latest episode. If you have questions for Attorney Jones, reach out at info@joneslegacylaw.com or visit our website at jones legacy law com.
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