Episode 016 – Overcoming the Belief That You Don’t Know Enough to Plan Your Estate

Atty. James Jones: [00:00:00] Estate planning’s complicated, it’s not something that you can usually throw together. It’s definitely not something that you can throw together on your own, typically, but that doesn’t mean that in order to have an estate plan, that you need to be an estate planning expert.

You don’t have to have study the different options and intricacies between wills and trusts, you don’t have to be an expert on statutory and case law regarding estate planning, you don’t even need to study the tax code to understand how estate taxes work.

In fact, you don’t need to read a single statute or case or regulation in order to put together an effective estate plan.

Narrator: 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 [00:01:00] 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.

Atty. James Jones: Welcome to Legacy Talk. I’m your host, James Jones. I’m an estate planning and probate attorney in Tacoma, Washington. I’ve been practicing over 20 years, and my main practice areas include estate planning, probate and estate administration. On Legacy Talk, we discuss topics surrounding families and estates.

Estate planning is often a confusing and complicated topic, but my goal with this podcast is to make it understandable and accessible to those who need it. So if this is something that interests you, I’d appreciate if you’d click the subscribe button [00:02:00] and like this episode so that you can follow along with us as we break down the barriers to estate planning.

I’m excited to get to today’s topic, today’s topic is Overcoming The Belief That You Don’t Know Enough To Plan Your Estate. Because you don’t need to know everything about estate planning to have an effective estate plan.

So on today’s show, we are talking about overcoming the belief that you don’t have enough knowledge or know enough to plan your estate, so let’s get to it.

Estate planning’s complicated, it’s not something that you can usually throw together. It’s definitely not something that you can throw together on your own, typically, but that doesn’t mean that in order to have an estate plan, that you need to be an estate planning expert.

You don’t have to have study the different options and intricacies between wills and trusts, you don’t have to be an expert on statutory and case law regarding estate planning, you don’t even need to study the tax code to understand how estate taxes work.

In [00:03:00] fact, you don’t need to read a single statute or case or regulation in order to put together an effective estate plan. Now, I know there are certain personalities that really like to get in the weeds on structures and schematics. This is for engineers, I’m talking to you, but that’s not really necessary. I have a lot of clients who are engineers here in this Seattle, Tacoma area and uh, they like to know the details, which is good.

But the truth is, you can get a basic understanding of estate planning in many different ways and you don’t have to have read all the code and the statutes and the regulations and all that.

So today, we’re going to be discussing ways to overcome the belief that you don’t know enough to plan your estate and what you do need to know. So the first thing, we’re talking five or six points here of things that we can do to overcome this belief, what we need to know.

So the first thing is education, right? We don’t want to go in completely blind to this and there’s lots of different ways to [00:04:00] learn about estate planning. Even the rudimentary stuff that’s, you know, what’s a will, what’s a trust, what’s a power of attorney? Like that’s stuff we can learn and that, and it’s not something that you shouldn’t learn.

I’m not saying that it’s not something that you need to be an expert on though. Okay. So you can educate yourself. That’s number one, right? And today we have lots of different ways to do that. You can use books, there’s seminars about estate planning, there’s online resources. I wrote a book called A Washington Consumers Guide to Estate Planning, 15 Questions and Answers that everyone should know about their Estate Plan.

It’s a real straightforward book, right? It’s a short read, but it provides the basics, right? It’s a great place to start sort of getting your feet in the discussion, okay? It doesn’t go everything in great detail, but it introduces concept in a way to provide a base understanding of the topic.

There’s also great online resources that you can look at, and there’s [00:05:00] tons of websites, the internet is massive, right? There’s tons of websites to talk about estate planning. Okay. My website alone, I’ve got, I don’t know how many articles are on there, but there’s a ton of articles.

There’s a ton of information on there about should I have a trust? Should I have a will? What do I do with my minor kids? You know, how do I protect my kids from losing all their money when they inherited from me? Like those kind of articles that are there and you know, that’s all readily available. That sort of gives you a background. Okay.

And reading stuff like that, I think can empower you to sort of take control of the reins. Like, sort of take control of things and say, you know, I do know enough. Right? And with the right guidance that education can really help you overcome this limiting belief of, I can’t do it ’cause I don’t know everything there is to know. Okay.

If you wanted to check the websites, JonesLegacyLaw.com, there’s tons of stuff. You can also receive a free copy of the book, which is this book right [00:06:00] here. And learn some things, okay? Learn some real basic stuff.

Number two, to overcome this belief of, we don’t know enough to do our interstate plan. Let’s focus on your goals and values first. Okay? Everybody has goals for their family or for themselves, they’ve got values that they live by, right? We’ve talked about this a lot on this podcast. What are our values? Who are we? What are we trying to accomplish? What do we want our kids to become? What do we wanna become? Right?

And so if we start there and focus on these goals and values, like we wanna implement a plan that supports these goals and values, right? So if we know what these are, right? If we take these goals and values and use them with a sense of purpose to, I wanna make sure that, you know, maybe thrift is one of your values.

I want to be a good saver, I wanna be a steward over the [00:07:00] money that I received through work or that I might inherit. I don’t want to be frivolous or spend thrift, right? I want have, you know, sort of that ingrained in my state. And that’s one of the things that when you’re creating estate plan, you can do, right?

You can create structures and trusts and things like that, sort of help emphasize that process and make sure that those kinds of values and goals are passed along to the next generation.

Number three, start small. Estate planning doesn’t have to be super complicated, okay? You don’t have to say, okay, I’m gonna do my estate plan, so I’m gonna get a trust and I’m gonna get some irrevocable trust and I’m gonna do a residence trust, and I’m gonna do a charitable remainder trust. Right?

You don’t have to get into that detail, especially when you’re starting out. Start with the basics. Do a will, right? Everybody should have a will that determines where everything goes, who’s in charge? Who takes care of the kids when I’m gone? You should have a [00:08:00] durable power of attorney. What happens if I’m incapacitated and I can’t act?

Someone needs to be named, you should name someone to step in those situations. We’ve talked about that before of course, in this podcast, you should have a healthcare directive that says, in my last days of my end of life care, what do I want? Do I want to be on life support? Do I not want to be on life support?

What kind of protections or provisions do I wanna implement there so that I’m comfortable and that my family doesn’t have to suffer? So start small, it doesn’t have to be overly complicated to start. You can start with this small plan, like a will-based plan with a will power of attorney healthcare directive.

And then, you know, maybe that grows into a trust down the road. Several episodes ago I talked about a family that had just young kids to start out. And so they did a will plan and then a few years later they had a couple more kids and they converted it to a trust plan, right? So things like that are very common and it’s a good way to start, right?

It’s a good way to sort of view this thing as the estate plan’s not a [00:09:00] static thing. It’s something that grows with you, it’s something that you wanna make sure fits your situation through all this phases of life. So starting at one point, it doesn’t mean you’re stuck there forever. Okay?

Number four, consult with an attorney. I’m an Attorney that focuses on estate planning, I’m very biased in regard to who you should talk to about your estate plan. Okay. I’m not a huge proponent of do-it-yourself Estate Plans. I’ve done a whole episode on that, I like the idea that you have someone guiding you. Right? Like lawyers that focus on estate planning have done all that research that we talked about.

We’ve done the dirty work, right? We’ve read those statutes in the case law and the tax code, right? We know these things and how they relate to you and we’ve analyzed the differences between different strategies of wills or trusts or different kinds of trusts. Right?

So that we know what makes the most sense for your plan. And so, take advantage of it, right? When I meet with a [00:10:00] client, we’re gonna talk about the process, we’re gonna answer questions, we’re gonna alleviate any concerns that you might have as someone that’s not an estate planning expert. And I always say this, I don’t have any clients that are estate planning experts, that’s why they come to see me, right?

Who wants to be an estate planning expert? Really that’s the most common thing. So, you know, we’ve done all that work so that you don’t have to, right? When you’re going in for a surgery or something, you don’t figure out exactly how they do it, right? So that you could potentially do it yourself if you needed to.

Same thing is true for estate planning, right? But use a professional that is so much easier to guide your path that way. Okay? And so that’s kind of something that’s a no-brainer as far as I’m thinking, though I’m very biased. I’ve said that before, I’m very biased. I’m an estate planning attorney who does this for a living. So, but talk to someone.

Number five, peer support. Talk to your friends, you’re not on an island, right? We live in a society. We all [00:11:00] have friends or family that’s probably done estate planning before. Right? And so maybe something that might help you and something that often helps people is to talk to people that have gone through the process before. And they can tell you it’s not the scariest thing that most lawyers aren’t jerks.

Well, I don’t know about that, they don’t have to be jerks, they’re not all condescending, you know, not all of them. And so, they can basically explain the process in a way that makes it much more comfortable. They can talk about things, look out for this, look out for that, make sure you know this going in, right?

And, you know, just sort of eases the transition into an estate planning appointment, into meeting with a professional, into considering this at all, or thinking about it at all. What did they read? You know, maybe they read a really good article that helped them, that they could point you to. Maybe they had a book that they read. You know, maybe they went to a seminar or something and that really opened their eyes to some [00:12:00] options.

So those are all things that you would learn talking to your peer group, your community group, your friends group. And they really can give you that reassurance and, you know, offer practical tips as to how they went through the process. It is not as scary as you might think, and knowing someone that’s been through it and come out the other side is kind of, maybe that’s a way to sort of get to it. Okay.

Maybe that’s the way to show that you don’t have to know everything. Okay.

And number six, finally, the last point that I wanna make here is take action. Right? Sometimes the best way to overcome a belief, or something that’s a hurdle for you, the best way to overcome that is to move, right? Take action, do it. So, I encourage anyone that’s thinking about estate planning and like, you know, I’m really reading and I really want to get this knowledge and I really wanna know every little detail.

And I don’t begrudge people for that because everybody has their own process, right? Some people really wanna know everything. Those [00:13:00] engineers that I talked about, they really wanna understand this and the mechanics and all this stuff, the ins and outs, you know, that’s just the way they’re wired and that’s why they’re engineers or their accountants or something like that.

And so, people have different options and different processes as to how they process information, how it causes them to act. But in reality, sitting there and waiting and waiting and reading, you’re never gonna get it, right? You’ll never get that full satisfaction in the vast majority of cases, you’re not gonna get it.

And so, taking action and saying, well, I know enough now. Okay. I know that what a will does, and I know what we need to have in there generally, and I know who I want to have in charge of my estate. I know who wants to take care of the kids if I’m not around and I know that I want to protect my kids’ assets.

And so take action. Make that appointment with an estate planning attorney. Talk to your friends and say, Hey, where did you guys go for your estate plan? A lot of the time they’ll give you a referral that they liked. Sometimes they’ll say, don’t go to that [00:14:00] person ’cause they didn’t have a great experience and sometimes that happens to everybody.

But when you take that action, your confidence grows, okay. Action leads to confidence, okay, action leads to movement, right? It leads to taking the next step, making progress, which we’re all trying to do here with our life. We’re all trying to make ourselves better and become better people and have a more, you know, robust life. And if you’re listening to this, you’re interested generally in estate planning or you’re thinking about it. And so hopefully this podcast helps you to take that next step. Okay.

So now the story time for this episode, and this is a bunch of stuff sort of mixed together. I’ve been doing this twenty-one years, I’ve done a lot of estate plans, right? I’ve been focused on estate planning for the vast majority of that twenty-one years. And the most common relief, and I’ve talked about this a million times, [00:15:00] is the most common reaction, not relief, the most common reaction is relief. Okay? A relief that is done, relief that box has been checked. That they’ve done it ,right? That they’ve done their estate plan.

The other thing that comes up a lot of the time is the relative simplicity of the process. It’s not rocket science, right? It’s documents, we’re using word, we’re not using like fancy programs to put this stuff together, we’re using Word and Excel and you know, whatever word processing document programs are out there, adobe, I don’t know.

It’s not rocket science, but it can be daunting and you know, the simplicity of it, particularly when you’re using in a state planning professional is, you know, eyeopening I think for clients. And really the best way to overcome that concern, like I’ve said, is to talk to someone, you know, talk to friends, but then talk to an estate planning attorney, [00:16:00] okay?

They’re there to guide you, answer questions, make sure that the process is straightforward. My goal with my clients is to make sure that we create plans that fit their specific situation and achieve their goals, right? We wanna address their goals, make sure that these things happen the best we can. Right?

We wanna focus on issues now with their family or friends or beneficiaries, or with whomever they’re dealing with, right? And make sure that those don’t become problems later. Okay? And we wanna make sure, my goal number one is, this isn’t some undecipherable text, you know, that I provide, here’s your trust or your will, good luck.

We wanna make sure that thing’s understandable, at least in the basic sections with regard to what’s actually happening. There’s gonna be stuff in these documents are thick, there’s boilerplate language that has to be in there because we wanna make sure [00:17:00] that we’re checking every box and making sure every I’s dotted and every T’s crossed.

What if this happens? What if that happens? We wanna make sure that those provisions are in the trust and a lot of that stuff is in the boilerplate. And so, that stuff’s sort of less understandable, I’ll be honest. Okay. I often tell people when we get into the major boilerplate of the document to pull that out if you’re having trouble sleeping at night and it’ll knock you out, right.

It’ll put you to sleep because it’s complicated, it’s legalese and you know, it’s not something that you’re gonna read for pleasure, but the main sections of the trust as to who’s in charge, who gets what, you know, what kind of provisions for protecting assets and stuff are in the trust. Those are pretty straightforward and those are understandable. So that’s how, sort of how I look at it. Okay?

And so another story that I wanted to bring up. I had clients recently come in with a somewhat complicated estate that’s a second marriage. They had different kids from different marriages.

We call them the Johnsons for purposes here. And they were business [00:18:00] owners and they had intellectual property, which is not, you know, not everybody has intellectual property like patents or copyrights or things like that. And so, we created a plan that fit their needs and was designed to accomplish these goals to treat their kids fairly.

You know, they had sort of age difference in kids. So we made sure that the plan sort of accounted for that. And so, we set up this plan with their assets and goals and their family and put it all in place, okay? And after signing the documents and everything was official, and everybody’s sort of relaxed and they sort of sit back in their chair and their shoulders relax, right?

Mr. Johnson says, something like this. He says, I just can’t believe how easy it was, right to get this in place. He was under the impression he’s a science guy, an engineer kind of guy, that it was so complicated, right? That it was something that was arduous to do, right? Something difficult and uncomfortable, [00:19:00] but it really, it’s not right. They were both worried about that process and how long and complicated it might be, right?

But they were pleasantly surprised at how simple it was. And another thing that the Johnsons did, which was on our list today, is they talked to a friend of theirs and this friend of theirs said, Hey I just did my estate plan and explained the process and how we got things set up and what sort of parameters we’re looking for, and they also happened to be a former client of mine or client of mine, who referred them to me and I was able to help them too. Right? I was able to help the Johnsons put their plan in order and provide that relief and ease that pressure of not having something in place.

And that’s validating and it’s positive. And so, that’s another thing that you’re gonna get from talking to friends is oftentimes they might have somebody, right? And that’s something that you want to have with your plan.

And so, that’s it for today’s episode. I think that the [00:20:00] overall theme of this is, You Don’t Have To Know Everything To Do Your Estate Planning. You don’t have to know all the intricacies of everything. Right? And there’s ways to find out things that you do need to know.

And a lot of the time that stuff’s right in front of our faces. Online resources, books, friends, professionals, definitely. And so, take advantage of those kinds of things, right? Take advantage of the people, and reading online’s first thing we usually do, we Google it usually. And so, take advantage of that stuff, but don’t let it limit you, right?

Don’t get stuck in the weeds, don’t leave the let it be over analysis paralysis, right? And take action. Take action to set your state up and protect your family, protect your assets, and you’ll be happier, right? You’ll have that relief, it’ll make you feel good. And that’s it.

So I’d like to thank you for listening to today’s episode of Legacy Talk.

If you like today’s episode [00:21:00] and would like to learn more, please like and subscribe for more great content. I’ve been your host, James Jones, to Your Legacy.

Narrator: 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 JonesLegacyLaw.com

join us again next week for another episode of the Legacy Talk podcast.