Writing Your Tulsa Estate Planning Blog

Social Security has a little known program that can help families with elderly members who are not able to handle their own finances.

One of the many problems which families of the elderly have to face, is that the elderly person can lose the ability to handle his or her own finances.

Through no fault of their own, they forget what bills they need to pay.

They give money to people to whom they should not give it.

They are susceptible to scammers.

Some of these problems can be handled with a general durable power of attorney. However, many families worry that because the Social Security check still comes in the name of an elderly person with dementia, the money might still be lost.

However, that worry is unnecessary, since Social Security has a program that can help in these situations, as Forbes discusses in “The Social Security Program For People With Dementia.”

The program is the Social Security Representative Payee Program.

It allows someone else to receive the benefit checks of a Social Security payee as a representative.

It is a little known program that has been around for almost as long as Social Security itself.

For families that know about it and use the program, it can provide a great relief.

Unfortunately, it can be a bit of a challenge if one wants to sign up.

It requires a lot of paperwork to be submitted.

For that reason, people who are interested in using the program, might want to first consult with an elder law attorney.

Reference: Forbes (Sep. 26, 2017) “The Social Security Program For People With Dementia.”

If you inherit something through a will, you cannot just take the will to the bank and demand they give you the contents of a bank account.

How wills actually work, is not understood by everyone.

Many people think that if something is written down in a will, then everything is settled. They think all that is required is for the beneficiary to show the will to whoever is holding the property the beneficiary is to inherit.

That is not the way it works at all.

Unfortunately, the misperception is common.

In fact, estate attorneys are used to hearing this from people named in wills, who think it all works that way and are upset when they discover that it does not.

The Times Herald recently discussed this in “Wills won’t work without probate.”

A will is only a bunch of words on paper that have no real legal authority, until the will is filed with a probate court.

The court must then agree to accept the will as representing the valid wishes of the deceased.

Once that is done, the probate court appoints a personal representative for the estate.

That personal representative is then charged with carrying out the directives in the will, under the supervision of the court.
This can result in a long and often expensive process.

It depends on the size of the estate, the ability of the personal representative and whether there are any challenges to the estate.

Of course, this can all usually be avoided by speaking to an estate planning attorney about getting a trust instead of a will.

Reference: The Times Herald (Sep. 22, 2017) “Wills won’t work without probate.”

A strange case out of the U.K. features a window cleaner, a fraudulent bankruptcy and the possibility of jail time.

For years, an elderly woman in Britain, Julie Spalding, had been looked after by the nephew to whom she promised to leave her estate.

She was not in good health and suffered from many falls.

The nephew said she became belligerent with him and eventually kicked him out of her life.

At that time, she grew close to the man who was employed to clean her windows. He began to look after Spalding and she changed her will to leave the window cleaner her entire estate.

When Spalding passed away, the nephew challenged the will in court and eventually won, as the Telegraph reports in “Window cleaner bequeathed £300,000 by customer faces jail for failing to hand money back to her family.”

The window cleaner was ordered to pay back all of the money he had received from Spalding’s estate.

He refused, however, and instead claimed he had already lost it all.

He even claimed that much of it had been in cash in his car, when the car was repossessed. To avoid given anything back, he obtained a bankruptcy judgment.

The window cleaner now appears to have been lying.

Through many small transactions, he transferred the money to his family members for safekeeping and opened many small bank accounts to stash some of the money.

He now faces possible jail time for his scheme.

The court case has been suspended, so that he can obtain legal counsel.

Reference: Telegraph (Aug. 30, 2017) “Window cleaner bequeathed £300,000 by customer faces jail for failing to hand money back to her family.”

After years of preliminary matters, a breach of trust case against the McClatchy Trust is finally being argued in court.

James B. McClatchy wanted to keep his media company as an independent company that was not owned by a larger media empire.

To that end, he created a trust, of which he was initially the sole income beneficiary that prohibited the McClatchy majority ownership from being sold to a larger enterprise.

His son Carlos McClatchy is now suing, claiming that the terms of the trust were violated in 2006.

The Sacramento Bee reports on this development in “San Francisco trial weighs breach-of-trust claims by McClatchy family member.”

The suit centers around the McClatchy purchase of another media company, Knight Ridder Inc., in 2006.

Carlos McClatchy claims the purchase caused a decline in value in McClatchy’s common stock and subsequently caused the company to stop paying dividends.

The trust points out that at the time of the purchase, James B. McClatchy was the sole income beneficiary of the trust and he supported the purchase.

It also claims that, at the time dividend payments were stopped, there was a financial crisis that was responsible for the stoppage.

It is not clear which party is in the right. The court will have to settle that.

What this illustrates is that trustees need to be careful with how they handle trust assets.

Even if current beneficiaries agree to trustees’ plans, future beneficiaries can always object and cause problems later.

Reference: Sacramento Bee (Sep. 13, 2017) “San Francisco trial weighs breach-of-trust claims by McClatchy family member.”

Experts predict that the estate tax exemption for 2018 will increase slightly to $5.49 million for a single person and $10.98 million for couples.

The IRS has not yet announced what the 2018 estate tax exemption will be. However, expert analysts think there will be some slightly good news for wealthy people.

They predict that the exemption should increase to $5.6 million for a single person and more than $11 million for married couples.

At the same time, they predict that the annual gift tax exemption should also increase to about $15,000, as Forbes reported in “Estate Tax Exemption To Top $11 Million Per Couple in 2018.”

This should give wealthy people and their estate planning attorneys a little bit more flexibility, as they attempt to shrink estates to below the threshold.

While most people who might be affected by this exemption increase would prefer to see the estate tax repealed entirely, that is increasingly looking like it will not happen this year.

Congress has turned its attention to tax reform, but getting anything passed could be a long process and will likely continue into next year.

Repealing the estate tax is also controversial. If Democratic votes are needed to pass tax reform legislation, that might take the estate tax off the table.

If you have questions about your estate and how it might have an impact on the estate tax, then you should see an experienced estate planning attorney in your area.

Reference: Forbes (Sep. 15, 2017) “Estate Tax Exemption To Top $11 Million Per Couple in 2018.”

It is not all that unusual for a child to not live up to the expectations of parents. Sometimes parents will be so disappointed when that happens, that they will attempt to cut the child out of their estate plans. They might want to reconsider.

Wealthy parents often have extremely high expectations for their children. They want their children to go to school, get a good job, raise a family and do all of the things that made the parents so successful.

However, sometimes a child just does not live up to those expectations.

Sometimes there is a black sheep who does everything the parents would not want him or her to do.

If the problems are severe enough, then the parents might even stop contact with the child and seek to cut him or her out of their estates.

The latter is often a bad idea, as the Globe and Mail discusses in “Think twice, wealthy family, before cutting the black sheep out of your will.”

One big thing to consider is that a child who receives nothing has no incentive to not cause problems.

A no-contest clause can prevent someone who does receive an inheritance from challenging an estate plan that they do not like, but it cannot prevent someone from doing so who is set to receive nothing or very little from an estate.

This can make cutting a child out of an estate plan a very expensive proposition. This is because the child has no reason to not launch legal fights.

A black sheep child can also be more easily controlled by using an estate plan to incentivize that child into desired behaviors.

An estate planning attorney can help you create a trust, for example, that only distributes money to the child when certain actions are taken by the child.

Reference: Globe and Mail (Sep. 19, 2017) “Think twice, wealthy family, before cutting the black sheep out of your will.”

Legalizing gay marriage did solve most of estate problems for same-sex couples.

When the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a Constitutional right to get married, many problems those couples faced were finally resolved. For the first time, gay couples had legal protections in case one of them passed away.

The laws of intestate succession would protect them, in case they did not have an estate plan.

Couples were also given more rights to information about the health of the other, so they could assist in the treatment plan if one or the other of them got seriously ill.

However, not all potential estate planning issues for same-sex couples are fully resolved, as Cleveland Jewish News discusses in “Same-sex couples could face estate planning road blocks.”

One of the biggest problems remains child custody.

Prior to legalizing same-sex marriage, it was not normally allowed for both partners in a same-sex relationship to be put on the birth certificate of a newborn.

This has important implications for any children born prior to the Supreme Court’s decision.

The automatic right of custody of children in the event the spouse whose name is on the birth certificate passes away, cannot be assumed for the other spouse.

Of course, this is an ever bigger problem for same-sex couples who have chosen not to get married. They still have all of the other potential issues that existed previously.

It is extremely important that same-sex couples see an estate planning attorney.

The law is more favorable than it used to be, but it is not yet perfect at protecting their rights.

Reference: Cleveland Jewish News (Sep. 9, 2017) “Same-sex couples could face estate planning road blocks

People who are opposed to eliminating the estate tax are often seen as wanting to do nothing more than to punish the wealthy. However, some of them are more concerned about the impact that estate tax repeal could have on charities.

At first glance, it might not seem like there is much of a relationship between the existence of the estate tax and charities.

The former takes money from the wealthiest estates involuntarily and uses it to help fund government programs. The latter are entities that people voluntarily give money to, in support of causes that they think benefit society.

However, the two are very much related, as Bloomberg discusses in “GOP Plan to Kill Estate Tax Sets Up Charitable Giving Conflict.”

The issue is that one of the most common ways to get around the estate tax is to shrink an estate to just below the estate tax exemption limit. A great way to do this is to give money to charity.

When the estate tax was temporarily eliminated in 2010, charitable giving was reduced by 37%.

This has many charities very nervous about the possibility that the estate tax could be eliminated again, as the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans would like.

Republicans are looking for ways to get around this problem by finding other ways to encourage charitable giving.
It is not yet certain whether they will have the votes necessary to do that.

It is also not certain at this point whether they will have the votes to eliminate the estate tax either.

Reference: Bloomberg (Aug. 25, 2017) “GOP Plan to Kill Estate Tax Sets Up Charitable Giving Conflict.”

It is not enough to get an estate plan once and leave it alone for all time. It needs to be constantly reviewed and updated to take account of changing circumstances.

Some people can get away with getting an estate plan once and never looking at it again. If someone never gets divorced, remarried, has more children or increases assets, then the first estate plan they get might be good enough for the rest of their lives.

This is true, even if that estate plan was written 50 years before the person passes away.

However, most people’s lives are not that constant.

In fact, most people have significant changes in their lives as they get older.

When things change, then estate plans normally need to be changed as well, as Forbes discusses in “Why Continuous Estate Planning Is Essential For the Rich and Super-Rich.”

The more wealth that you have, the more often you will probably need to change your estate plan.

This is because your assets will grow, how you hold those assets will change and tax laws will also change.

Nevertheless, it is not just the wealthy who need to constantly review and update their estate plans.

Everyone should do so, whenever there is a significant change in their lives that should be reflected in an estate plan.

Examples of these changes include divorce, remarriage, a new child, a new higher paying job, a new grandchild and much more.

If you have not changed your estate plan recently, then take a look at it.

Ask yourself whether it still does what you want it to do, given all the changes in your life.

If the answer is no or even maybe not, then talk to an estate planning attorney.

Reference: Forbes (Sep. 6, 2017) “Why Continuous Estate Planning Is Essential For the Rich and Super-Rich.”

Prenuptial agreements are a great way to set the terms for what will happen if a couple ever gets divorced or when one of the spouses passes away. They are meant to protect assets when necessary, but they are increasingly being used for something more.

When two people get married, it is not unusual for one or more of them to have much greater wealth than the other. The wealthier person can use a prenuptial agreement to guard against a divorce that strips him or her of too much wealth.

Another common issue is when one or both of them enters the marriage with children from a previous relationship.

They might want to protect against a spouse getting too much of an estate and leaving their children with little to inherit.

Prenuptial agreements are an excellent way to guard against both of these potential problems.

They allow a couple to come to terms beforehand, so everyone is happy.

However, some people try to do more with prenuptial agreements, as Market Watch reports in “Prenuptial agreements contain more bizarre ‘lifestyle’ clauses.”

Prenuptial agreements are now being used to guard against undesired behavior by future spouses.

For example, some agreements now penalize a spouse for cursing, gaining too much weight or hanging out with friends too much.

The problem with these agreements, besides the obvious who would want to marry someone with those types of demands, is their enforceability.

A court is unlikely to enforce an agreement that penalizes a spouse for gaining an extra few pounds over the limits set out in the agreement.

Reference: Market Watch (Sep. 9, 2017) “Prenuptial agreements contain more bizarre ‘lifestyle’ clauses.”