4 Critical Estate Planning Tasks to Complete Before Going on Vacation

Spring break may be over but most of us are already looking forward to our summer vacations. Going on vacation entails lots of planning: packing luggage, buying plane tickets, making hotel reservations, and confirming rental vehicles. But one thing many people forget to do is plan for the worst. Traveling, especially in foreign destinations, means you’ll likely be at greater risk than usual for illness, injury, and even death.

In light of this reality, you must have a legally sound and updated estate plan in place before taking your next trip. If not, your loved ones can face a legal nightmare if something should happen to you while you’re away. The following are 4 critical estate planning tasks to take care of before departing.

Watching the sunset in Naples, Florida.

1. Make sure your beneficiary designations are up-to-date

Some of your most valuable assets, like life insurance policies and retirement accounts, do not transfer via a will or trust. Instead, they have beneficiary designations that allow you to name the person (or persons) you’d like to inherit the asset upon your death. It’s vital you name a primary beneficiary and at least one alternate beneficiary in case the primary dies before you. Moreover, these designations must be regularly reviewed and updated, especially following major life events like marriage, divorce, and having children.

2. Create power of attorney documents
Outside of death, unforeseen illness and injury can leave you incapacitated and unable to make critical decisions about your own well-being. Given this, you must grant someone the legal authority to make those decisions on your behalf through power of attorney. You need two such documents: medical power of attorney and financial durable power of attorney. Medical power of attorney gives the person of your choice the authority to make your healthcare decisions for you, while durable financial power of attorney gives someone the authority to manage your finances. As with beneficiary designations, these decision makers can change over time, so before you leave for vacation, be sure both documents are up to date.

On vacation in Maui, Hawaii.

3. Name guardians for your minor children
If you’re the parent of minor children, your most important planning task is to legally document guardians to care for your kids in the event of your death or incapacity. These are the people whom you trust to care for your children—and potentially raise them to adulthood—if something should happen to you. Given the monumental importance of this decision, we’ve created a comprehensive system called the Kids Protection Plan that guides you step-by-step through the process of creating the legal documents naming these guardians. Even if the time is not right to implement a comprehensive estate plan, I would be happy to help you with this specific element before your next trip.  

4. Organize your digital assets
If you’re like most people, you probably have dozens of digital accounts like email, social media, cloud storage, and cryptocurrency. If these assets aren’t properly inventoried and accounted for, they’ll likely be lost forever if something happens to you. At minimum, you may want to write down the location and passwords for each account and ensure someone you trust knows what to do with these digital assets in the event of your death or incapacity. To make this process easier, consider using LastPass or a similar service that stores and organizes your passwords. However, tread carefully in this arena, as allowing or directing another person to log-in with your credential violates the terms of services of many websites and may even be against the law in certain circumstances. Contact me to discuss your specific situation.

Complete your vacation planning now
If you have a vacation planned, be sure to add these 4 items to your to-do list before leaving. And if you need help completing any of these tasks—or would simply like us to double check the plan you have in place—consult contact me immediately.

I recommend you complete these tasks at least 8 weeks before you depart. However, if your trip is sooner than that, call and let us know you need a rush Family Wealth Planning Session, and we’ll do our best to fit you in as soon as possible. Contact me today to get started. 

6 Questions to Consider When Selecting Beneficiaries For Your Life Insurance Policy—Part 2

In the first part of this series, we discussed the first three of six questions you should ask yourself when selecting a life insurance beneficiary. Here we cover the final half:

Selecting a beneficiary for your life insurance policy sounds pretty straightforward. But given all of the options available and the potential for unforeseen problems, it can be a more complicated decision than you might imagine.

For instance, when purchasing a life insurance policy, your primary goal is most likely to make the named beneficiary’s life better or easier in some way in the aftermath of your death. However, unless you consider all of the unique circumstances involved with your choice, you might actually end up creating additional problems for your loved ones.

Last week, we discussed the first three of six questions you should ask yourself when choosing a life insurance beneficiary. Here we cover the remaining three:

4. Are any of your beneficiaries minors?

While you’re technically allowed to name a minor as the beneficiary of your life insurance policy, it’s a bad idea to do so. Insurance carriers will not allow a minor child to receive the insurance benefits directly until they reach the age of majority.

If you have a minor named as your beneficiary when you die, then the proceeds would be distributed to a court-appointed custodian tasked with managing the funds, often at a financial cost to your beneficiary. And this is true even if the minor has a living parent. This means that even the child’s other living birth parent would have to go to court to be appointed as custodian if he or she wanted to manage the funds. And, in some cases, that parent would not be able to be appointed (for example, if they have poor credit), and the court would appoint a paid fiduciary to hold the funds.

Rather than naming a minor child as beneficiary, it’s better to set up a trust for your child to receive the insurance proceeds. That way, you get to choose who would manage your child’s inheritance, and how and when the insurance proceeds would be used and distributed.

5. Would the money negatively affect a beneficiary?
When considering how your insurance funds might help a beneficiary in your absence, you also need to consider how it might potentially cause harm. This is particularly true in the case of young adults.

For example, think about what could go wrong if an 18-year-old suddenly receives a huge windfall of cash. At best, the 18-year-old might blow through the money in a short period of time. At worst, getting all that money at once could lead to actual physical harm (even death), as could be the case for someone with substance-abuse issues.

To help mitigate these potential complications, some life insurance companies allow your death benefit to be paid out in installments over a period of time, giving you some control over when your beneficiary receives the money. However, as discussed earlier, if you set up a trust to receive the insurance payment, you would have total control over the conditions that must be met for proceeds to be used or distributed. For example, you could build the trust so that the insurance proceeds would be kept in trust for beneficiary’s use inside the trust, yet still keep the funds totally protected from future creditors, lawsuits, and/or divorce.

6. Is the beneficiary eligible for government benefits?

Considering how your life insurance money might negatively affect a beneficiary is absolutely critical when it comes to those with special needs. If you leave the money directly to someone with special needs, an insurance payout could disqualify your beneficiary from receiving government benefits.

Under federal law, if someone with special needs receives a gift or inheritance of more than $2,000, they can be disqualified for Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid. Since life insurance proceeds are considered inheritance under the law, an individual with special needs SHOULD NEVER be named as beneficiary.

To avoid disqualifying an individual with special needs from receiving government benefits, you would create a “special needs” trust to receive the proceeds. In this way, the money will not go directly to the beneficiary upon your death, but be managed by the trustee you name and dispersed per the trust’s terms without affecting benefit eligibility.

The rules governing special needs trusts are quite complicated and can vary greatly from state to state, so if you have a child who has special needs, meet with us to ensure you have the proper planning in place, not just for your insurance proceeds, but for the lifetime of care your child may need.

Make sure you’ve considered all potential circumstances

These are just a few of the questions you should consider when choosing a life insurance beneficiary. I would be happy to speak with you to be certain you’ve thought through all possible circumstances.

And if you think you may need to create a trust—special needs or otherwise—to receive the proceeds of your life insurance, meet with me, so I can properly review all of your assets and consider how to best leave behind what you have in a way that will create the most benefit—and the least challenges—for the people you love. Schedule a time to speak with me today!

6 Questions to Consider When Selecting Beneficiaries for a Life Insurance Policy—Part 1

Selecting a beneficiary for your life insurance policy sounds pretty straightforward. You’re just deciding who will receive the policy’s proceeds when you die, right?

But as with most things in life, it’s a bit more complicated than that. It can help to keep in mind that naming someone as your life insurance beneficiary really has nothing to do with you: It should be based on how the funds will affect the beneficiary’s life once you’re no longer here.

It’s very likely that if you’ve purchased life insurance, you did so to make someone’s  life better or easier in some way in the wake of your death. But unless you consider all of the unique circumstances involved with your choice, you might actually end up creating additional problems for the people you love.

Given the potential complexities involved, here are a few important questions you should ask yourself when choosing your life insurance beneficiary:

1. What are you intending to accomplish?

The first thing to consider is the “real” reason you’re buying life insurance. On the surface, the reason may simply be because it’s the responsible thing for adults to do. But I recommend you dig deeper to discover what you ultimately intend to accomplish with your life insurance.

Are you married and looking to replace your income for your spouse and kids after death? Are you single without kids and just trying to cover the costs of your funeral? Are you leaving behind money for your grandkids’ college fund? Are you intending to make sure your business continues after you’re gone? Or perhaps your life insurance is in place to cover a future estate-tax burden?

The real reason you’re investing in life insurance is something only you can answer. The answer is critical, because it is what determines how much and what kind of life insurance you should have in the first place. And by first clearly understanding what you’re actually intending to accomplish with the policy, you’ll be in a much better position to make your ultimate decision—who to select as beneficiary.

2. What are your beneficiary options?

Your insurance company will ask you to name a primary beneficiary—your top choice to get the insurance money at the time of your death. If you fail to name a beneficiary, the insurance company will distribute the proceeds to your estate upon your death. If your estate is the beneficiary of your life insurance, that means a probate court judge will direct where your insurance money goes at the completion of the probate process.

And this process can tie your life insurance proceeds up in court for months or even years. To keep this from happening to your loved ones, be sure to name—at the very least—one primary beneficiary.

In case your primary beneficiary dies before you, you should also name at least one contingent (alternate) beneficiary. For maximum protection, you should probably name more than one contingent beneficiary in case both your primary and secondary choices have died before you. Yet, even these seemingly straightforward choices are often more complicated than they appear due to the options available.

For example, you can name multiple primary beneficiaries, like your children, and have the proceeds divided among them in whatever way you wish. What’s more, the beneficiary doesn’t necessarily have to be a person. You can name a charity, nonprofit, or business as the primary (or contingent) beneficiary.

It’s important to note that if you name a minor child as a primary or contingent beneficiary (and he or she ends up receiving the policy proceeds), a legal guardian must be appointed to manage the funds until the child comes of age. This can lead to numerous complications (which we’ll discuss in detail next week in Part Two), so you should definitely consult with an experienced estate planning if you’re considering this option.

When selecting your beneficiaries, you should ultimately base your decision on which person(s) or organization(s) you think would most benefit from the money. In general, you can designate one or more of the following examples as beneficiaries:

• One person

• Two or more people (you decide how money is split among them)

• A trust you’ve created

• Your estate

• A charity, nonprofit, or business

Next week, we’ll continue with Part Two in this series discussing the remaining three questions to consider when naming beneficiaries for your life insurance policy.

90210 Star Luke Perry’s Death Demonstrates the Importance of Planning for Incapacity

In late February, Luke Perry, who became famous starring in the 1990s TV series Beverly Hills 90210, suffered a massive stroke at age 52. He was hospitalized under heavy sedation, and five days later, when it became clear he wouldn’t recover, his family decided to remove life support.

Perry died on March 4th, 2019 surrounded by his two children—21-year-old Jack and 18-year-old Sophie—along with his fiancé, ex-wife, mother, siblings, and others.

Whether or not you were a Luke Perry fan, it’s hard not to be somewhat shocked when someone so young, successful, and seemingly healthy passes away so suddenly. In these moments, the fragile impermanence of life becomes glaringly obvious. It’s life’s way of reminding us that incapacity and death can strike at any time, no matter who you are.

Such reminders can make you feel extremely vulnerable. And they can also be a precious reminder to make the most of life now.

Reminders of the fleeting nature of life can actually be a wonderful thing, if it motivates you to savor life now AND take the proper action to protect the ones you love through proper estate planning. And while we don’t yet know exactly what levels of planning Perry had in place, it appears he was thoughtful and responsible enough to have at least covered the basics.

Planning for incapacity and death

Perry was reportedly inspired to create his own estate plan following a fairly recent health scare. In 2015, after discovering he had precancerous growths during a colonoscopy, Perry created a will, leaving everything to his two children. Since Perry was worth an estimated $10 million, divorced with kids from the first marriage, and about to be married again, creating a will was the very least he could do.

But wills are just a small part of the planning equation. Wills only apply to the distribution of your assets following death, and even then, your will must go through the court process known as probate for your assets to be distributed. Because a will only comes into play upon your death, if you’re ever incapacitated by accident or illness as Perry was, it offers neither you nor your family any protections.

In Perry’s case, he was incapacitated by a stroke and on life support for nearly a week before he died. During this period, the fact Perry had a will was irrelevant because he was still alive. But given how events unfolded, it appears Perry had other planning vehicles in place to prepare for just this situation.

The power over life and death

During the time he was incapacitated, someone was called upon to make crucial medical decisions for Perry’s welfare, while his family was summoned to his side. To this end, it’s likely that Perry designated someone to serve as his medical decision-maker by granting them medical power of attorney - in Minnesota known as a health care directive. He may have also created a living will, which would provide specific instructions to this individual regarding how to make these medical decisions.

Granting medical power of attorney gives the person you name the authority to make healthcare decisions on your behalf in the event of your incapacity. The document that does this is known as an advance healthcare directive, and it’s an absolute must-have for every adult over age 18.

Perry was put on life support for nearly a week, and then he was removed from it and allowed to die without ever regaining consciousness—and without any apparent conflict between his loved ones. This indicates that someone in his family likely had the legal authority to make those heart-wrenching decisions over Perry’s life and death.

Without medical power of attorney, if any of Perry's family were in disagreement over how his medical care should be handled, the family may have needed a court order to terminate life support. This could have needlessly prolonged the family’s suffering and made his death even more public, costly, and traumatic for those he left behind. 

The power over your money

Along with medical power of attorney, every adult should also have financial durable power of attorney. In the event of your incapacity, financial durable power of attorney is an estate planning tool that gives the person you choose immediate authority to manage your finances, such as paying your bills, collecting government benefits, and overseeing your bank accounts.

We can’t be sure at this point whether or not Perry put in place durable power of attorney, but since this planning document goes hand-in hand with medical power of attorney, it’s almost certain he did. Yet seeing that Perry was only incapacitated for five days before his death, durable power of attorney may not seem totally necessary in his case.

But what if Perry’s incapacity had lasted a lot longer?

Given that Perry could have lingered on life support for months or years, it’s crucial that someone he trusted had the authority to manage his finances during his incapacity. Without durable power of attorney, the court will choose someone to manage your finances, and that someone might be a person you wouldn’t want anywhere near your life savings or checkbook.

What’s more, that someone could even be a “professional” who gets paid hefty hourly fees to handle things, even if you have family members who want to serve.

Learn from Perry’s example

While Perry’s death is certainly sad, if it inspires you to put the proper estate planning in place, it can ultimately prove immensely beneficial. Whether you already have a basic plan in place or nothing at all, meet with me to get educated about the specifics necessary to keep your family out of court and out conflict if and when something happens to you.

I’ll help ensure that in the event of your incapacity, or when you die, your loved ones will have the same protections Perry’s had—and more. Contact us today to attend one of our live educational events or get started with a private Family Wealth Planning Session.

UPDATE: Hacked laptop reveals cryptocurrency was already gone . . .

In a previous post I discussed the importance of accounting for digital assets in the context of the mysterious death of a Canadian cryptocurrency entrepreneur who had suddenly died while visiting India only weeks after implementing an estate plan but failing to account for nearly $150 million in cryptocurrency assets. You can read that here. His company claimed that the assets were frozen on a laptop and that he was the only one who knew the password.

Well, security experts were finally able to hack into his laptop to retrieve the funds. However, what they found was that digital assets had been siphoned out of the laptop nearly 6 months prior to his supposed death. I would say this is even more evidence that Mr. Cotten is still alive somewhere. More on the story here!