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MASON & ASSOCIATES, LLC

FEFP: Estate Planning Across State Lines for Federal Employees (EP76)

October 14, 2024

What happens to your estate planning documents when you move between states? In this episode, Megan Ingram and Julie Steinbacher from Steinbacher, Goodall & Yurchak share expert advice on the legal implications of relocating and how it affects your estate plan. You'll learn about the importance of keeping your documents updated, especially after major life changes or moves, and how laws like the Uniform Trust Act help estate documents travel across state lines.

We also dive into critical topics like planning for loved ones with disabilities, preparing for aging and dementia, and safeguarding estates against threats like "ghost hacking." Discover why proactive legal and financial guidance is essential, from reducing inheritance tax burdens to avoiding conflicts through clear communication with family members and professionals.

Listen to the full episode here:

What you will learn:

  • Who Megan and Julie are and their backgrounds. (3:20)
  • What ACTEC is. (6:38)
  • How moving between states impacts estate planning documents. (11:30)
  • The importance of reviewing your documents frequently. (18:00)
  • How someone can go about updating their documents. (21:00)
  • The reason for avoiding probate—and what that means. (27:40)
  • How to ensure trust documents travel well between states. (35:00)
  • How to avoid fights within your family during estate planning. (43:00)
  • Why you shouldn’t sign anything until you have a professional to guide you. (51:00)
  • What “ghost hacking” is. (57:35)
  • The importance of knowing how complex estate planning can be. (1:07:20)

 

Ideas worth sharing:

  • "What happens if you don't just get sick, but you get dementia? What do we need to do today as a family to prepare for that journey?" - Julie Steinbacher
  • "The amount of money I feel like we save people by helping them make a good plan and [explaining] how to administer it, I think, is just amazing." - Julie Steinbacher
  • “If you have an attorney and you have a plan, you should go back and look at your documents and make sure that it is still the right plan for you.” - Julie Steinbacher

Resources from this episode:


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Read the Transcript Below:

Congratulations for taking ownership of your financial plan by tuning into the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast, hosted by Mason & Associates, financial advisors with over three decades of experience serving you.

John Mason: Welcome to the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast. I'm John Mason, Certified Financial Planner and President at Mason & Associates. This is gonna be an awesome episode. We are happy to introduce Steinbacher, Goodall & Yurchak. It's an estate planning firm, a law firm in Pennsylvania that's going to help us discuss a variety of issues like what happens when you do estate planning documents in Virginia and you move to Pennsylvania.

We are capable of talking about some of the issues with clients who have a second home in Florida or maybe moving to Florida. And then we're also going to focus on things like estate administration, where admittedly, Tommy and I are a little weak. We know what it takes to draft the documents. We know what it takes to implement those documents.

Where we don't have a lot of visibility is where we get to the back end of this where our clients or maybe even you listening to this podcast end up actually having to serve and do what those documents say. So we're really excited today. Tommy Blackburn, CFP, CPA, PFS, and then we have Megan Ingram and Julie Steinbacher here with us today as our guests.

Everyone, welcome to the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast.

Megan Ingram: Thank you so much for having us today. We're excited to be here.

John Mason: And I'll do a little bit more of an introduction here. So, Julie, you are the founder of the firm. You're an owner of the firm. You serve in a variety of capacities.

And we were talking before we launched the recording here. Maybe both of you can just share a little bit about what your typical day looks like, who the clients are that you're typically serving, that way our audience can kind of get to know you a little bit before we dive into some of these other topics.

Megan Ingram: Well, I'll go ahead and go first. So thanks again. My name is Megan Ingram. I have been an attorney with Steinbacher, Goodall & Yurchak since 2020. I primarily focus my practice in special needs planning. So I am working with families during life to get a plan in place if they have a child or a loved one who has a special need or a disability and find out how we can get the supports and the plan in place to provide their loved one with the care that they need after their parents or their loved one passes away and figure out how we can pass that individual and inheritance in a way that's not going to jeopardize their health insurance or any other kinds of government benefits that they might be receiving.

I also do quite a bit of wealth protection planning in our firm as well to do planning for families who have estates of one and a half million or more. Maybe they have a business. There are some special tax considerations that we need to keep in mind. And I also do some long-term care planning with individuals.

Julie Steinbacher: I'm Julie Steinbacher. I am the founder of Steinbacher, Goodall & Yurchak. I actually started the firm over 20 years ago in my garage of my house, and we have now grown to seven locations serving Northeast Central Pennsylvania. And from a day-to-day standpoint, I could be doing all kinds of different things, but what I really love doing is helping clients really think about what happens if they get sick.

What do they need to do today to make sure that they're protected? What happens if they pass away? Who's going to get what stuff? How can we make sure that what they have gets to their beneficiaries in the simplest, most tax advantage manner possible? And lastly, we have a real focus at our firm. What happens if you don't just get sick, but you get dementia?

What do we need to do today as a family to prepare for that journey? And so I consider myself extremely privileged that I get to spend my days talking to people, and making a plan for the future so that they can age in place, so that they can get their assets. to their loved ones simply and easily and not pay any more tax than what they need to.

And I deal with both the planning end of it, and I also deal with the administration end. So on any given day, I could be dealing with families who their loved one has passed away or people who are preparing for that.

John Mason: Well, thank you for the intro, both of you. And Julie, congratulations on the firm. I think Mike and Ken, our founders at Mason & Associates. I don't know that they started in their garage or do you say garage or basement?

Julie Steinbacher: No, I said my garage. Yeah, it started in my garage.

John Mason: But we've heard other awesome people who have started things from the garage. I'm pretty sure Apple was started in a garage if I got that right.

So congratulations on everything you built and we personally have referred to your firm in the past and hopefully we'll be able to continue to do that and one of the ways that we found your firm was through ACTEC, I believe. I think one or more of you are on ACTEC. And then after ACTEC, it was like, let me go to their websites. Let me see who is legit, who's not legit. And kind of the thing that pushed me over the edge and recommending your firm was the fact that you also have a podcast and that y'all are, I don't know if you're actively producing content or you're repurposing, but I was impressed at the level of activities.

And so maybe share a little bit about your podcast, what ACTEC is because our audience is going to be nationwide, even not in the United States, listening to this podcast. So what is ACTEC? How can people find good quality estate planning firms? Obviously, if people are in PA, maybe they want to look you up and see the services that you can provide. But maybe one of y'all can touch on those things.

Julie Steinbacher: Yeah, great. Yeah. So I'm a member of ACTEC. And so is Amos Goodall. And ACTEC is the American College of Trust and Estates Council. And it's a phenomenal group of really leading attorneys across the nation. It's difficult to become a member of ACTEC. And it really shows that somebody is really a good substantive attorney, in my opinion.

And it's a commitment. I commit to attending and being an active participant. Being a member of ACTEC is not something you hang up on your wall. You're supposed to attend the events and actively work on the committees. And it's just been a phenomenal journey for me and it is something that's unusual, particularly in the localities that we're at, which although we service clients in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh area, our office is more in the rural parts of Pennsylvania. It's very unusual to have attorneys who are members of ACTEC in the more rural areas. And that's part of the process that you have to go through to become a member, and to be nominated, and to have all of the experience that you need to have to be part of that.

On the other side of it, also, I also have an LLM in Elder Law, and so does Amos Goodall, and that's unusual. So an LLM is a master's degree after you become an attorney, as if you haven't went to school long enough. We also have CELA's, Certified Elder Law Attorneys at our office. And so, I believe very strongly that the law keeps changing, the world is changing, and that we as attorneys have to keep up on those changing, changes so that we can serve our clients better.

And podcasts are one of them. So, when COVID hit, we had always at our firm had a resource center, where for years, the idea was that I took some of my marketing dollars and put it into our resource center, which was a building where we had seminars. And the idea was to educate people, to let them know what was going to happen in the second half of life.

What did they need to know and really to serve the public, whether they were our clients or not? And when COVID hit, obviously that shut down and at that time we made a commitment to taking that type of programming through a podcast. And so it's the second half of life podcast. And John, you're correct.

Sometimes we're really good at getting good content on there. And sometimes we're repurposing things that we think are beneficial that we've done for other purposes, such as seminars, but still able to make it so that people are able to gather that information so that they can educate themselves and make the best decision possible for their lives.

John Mason: Well, it's amazing how similar our firms are and for our audience, you've probably heard us talk about this in the past, but we, our marketing strategy was seminars and we would have two seminars a month. We would order Domino's pizza or whatever it was, we'd have some Cokes and pizza and we used to market, Julie, this is not a gourmet meal, but it's a gourmet meal for your mind.

And the difference was you can go to those free steak dinner seminars, or you can come to a place where we're going to give you pizza and it's more of like this down-home real thing rather than this like fake, Schlesinger steak or what have you. So then we noticed our participation in seminars really started dwindling in 2017, 18, whenever we stopped doing them and whether it's the marketing, the fiduciary rules, whatever it was, there was a switch where we started getting a lack of participation, but the radio show always did great for us. And then when we launched the podcast, it's been a way to connect with folks across the country like y'all. So very similar paths. Let's call out episode 23, Tommy, before we dive into more of the meat and potatoes with Megan and Julie.

Episode 23 was with Heather Szajda, Virginia State & Trust Law. They're in Richmond, Virginia, and we have a lot of clients in Virginia. We've used Virginia State & Trust Law quite extensively. In addition to listening to this podcast, we would love for the audience to make sure you go back, listen to episode 23.

These two are really going to complement each other because there's going to be similarities, there's also going to be specific differences as we talk about Admin, Pennsylvania, and Florida, which we did not cover in that previous episode.

So, let's talk a little bit about philosophy, Megan, on estate planning documents. And let's say Tommy's working with a client in Virginia. He helps them get a beautiful estate planning package, which maybe I will oversimplify. Hopefully, you don't disagree. A revocable living trust, two wills, two powers of attorney, two medical directives.

They may have different names in different states, but essentially directions what happens when I die, some sort of probate avoidance strategy called revocable trust, who can make financial decisions for me if I can't and who makes medical decisions for me if I can't. So we have this beautiful binder.

We have all this stuff. We worked really hard getting it right and then they moved to Pennsylvania. What happens now?

Megan Ingram: Well, I would say the next best thing they can do is sit down with an attorney in Pennsylvania to review that and make sure everything is still good to go under Pennsylvania law.

A state planning law tends to be very state-specific. There are some things that transfer very well between state lines and other things that Pennsylvania is very picky on. The very first thing I would say is those powers of attorney. Pennsylvania is very picky on what it needs to see specifically in that power of attorney for who can manage my money and my finances.

On a personal note, I have yet to see a power of attorney for finances and assets done in another state that meets all of the requirements of everything Pennsylvania needs a power of attorney to have just because Pennsylvania is very specific. Now, I will say, and Julie, correct me if my understanding here is incorrect, but some of the things that Pennsylvania requires in a financial power of attorney, if someone's POA does not say that thing, Pennsylvania might say it's still valid, but the rules are going to be very different if someone challenges it.

And also in a practical standpoint, our experience is some of the banks or the financial institutions that the client might be presenting this financial power of attorney to, if it looks very different from the types of documents that they're used to seeing under Pennsylvania law, for very good reason, the bank and the financial institution in the interest of protecting their customer might be hesitant to accept it and to honor it. So for all of those reasons, I'm going to say someone who's moving into Pennsylvania, very likely that financial power of attorney might need to be updated. The medical powers of attorney who can make my medical decisions for me, more likely that those documents might be okay under Pennsylvania law. But again, very state-specific, and some of the things that we're going to have to really look through the terms of that document to see what it says, make sure everything is covered in it.

The client switches are clearly spelled out as Pennsylvania needs it to say. A revocable living trust tends to travel pretty well across state lines, especially if we're just using that revocable trust for probate avoidance. If any kind of a trust is kind of looped into any kind of long-term care planning, then we're going to have to look through it with a fine tooth comb. But a revocable living trust for probate avoidance is usually in good shape when it comes to Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania is usually more lenient through that. But in my experience, some of the big things that we're updating in those documents, even though Pennsylvania law and that is pretty compliant and meshes well with the other state, is do we need to update any of the decision makers or any of the players in that document?

I oftentimes will see folks choosing banks or financial institutions, some kind of professional decision-maker. For a trust, as an executor for a will, and so we're always going to need to look through and make sure, first off, does that bank or that financial institution cover Pennsylvania? Do you have completely different banks and financial institutions now?

Did you go with someone more local and maybe we should shift decision makers then? Or maybe you've, maybe you didn't choose a bank or financial institution, but the individuals you chose are no longer as close to you geographically, and maybe their goal was that they want someone more closer geographically.

And so even if the contents of the document and the terms of the documents are okay under Pennsylvania law, we're always going to need to be looking through every part of the document to see, even though the law is okay, practically do we need to make any other updates to this plan?

John Mason: Well, there's certainly a lot to unpack there. A lot of good information for our clients and I think one thing you hit on early there, Megan, was that if they look different, and boy, we battle frequently with financial institutions, very often the big banks, very often these people who just say that financial power of attorney is three years old. I'm not going to accept it. And it's like, well, you don't really have a choice, but then it's like, are we going to get in a lawsuit? Like, are we gonna, what are we going to do here? How deep are we going to fight this? So I can certainly see from experience and we often, Tommy, ask clients to update their documents every five to seven years just so it's fresh, it's clean, it's hard to dispute that this was my intent. It becomes much easier for people to kind of stick their nose up at you if it's 25 years old and then they just want to wipe their hands off it.

Tommy Blackburn: Yeah, sometimes it's even the state of Virginia, it's like the law says you have to accept this document, but the bank still say don't care, not going to accept it.

So then it's, what's the cost of trying to enforce it? It's usually not worth it. Almost, I think, yeah, John, that's all great stuff. So I am curious, what do y'all advise on how often should documents be reviewed? regardless of whether we're traveling state lines and to the power of attorney point, I think it's almost why it's one of the reasons John and I, I think we have a love-hate relationship with trust, and one of the reasons we like them or push them potentially is to get around this power of attorney issue. It seems like trustees don't encounter anywhere near the pushback that a power of attorney does.

Julie Steinbacher: Yeah, we totally agree with that. The power of attorney document is just becoming more and more difficult.

And the reality of it is people are coming to us to do an estate plan often because they wanna make it easier for their children, whoever is gonna be their decision maker, and to put all that time and energy into having a plan and then not keeping it updated just doesn't make sense. So we always tell our clients that they need to think about updating it.

Now in our state, for many people, we have a mental health power of attorney, and that needs to be reviewed every two years. So that kind of makes it a natural thing at our office that we would be reaching out to them. But also important if anything happens in their life, they get a diagnosis, they have a death of a child.

And for many years I've told people, every, and I don't know if I'd still say this, but like every presidential election, every four years I think is a really good amount of time if you don't have anything else going on that you need to be looking at the documents and updating it.

And a lot of times clients will say, “Well, I don't want to have to come back to you.” Like, I know. Like my job. I'm trying to do a really good job and they hope they never have to see me again. And I always think about it like it's kind of like when you buy a car, you make a major investment, but it'd be kind of crazy not to get the oil changed or get new brakes on it.

And so often when we're making changes, as many times we're making changes because their lives have changed or the law like when the secure act came out, there was just a small thing that needed to be done differently, or it could be done better, or look at it, but the overall revocable living trust or the overall plan doesn't need to be redone, just little changes.

And I think that's important for people to know. Even when we talk about having to redo powers of attorneys, it's a pain, but they're the simpler, less expensive part of all of this. And so I really urge people, if you have an attorney and you have a plan, you should go back and see them and relook at it.

Relook at it in today's light of what your life is like and what the law is. Make sure it's still the best plan for you.

John Mason: Well, I like the, I mean, I didn't know about the mental health power of attorney in Pennsylvania and the two-year requirements, that's certainly an interesting thing that we don't have in Virginia, to my knowledge, and there are differences between states.

Like, I'm pretty sure, well, I know we have a transfer on death deed for mortgages or properties in Virginia, transfer on death deed capabilities. I don't think you have that in Pennsylvania. You have a healthcare power of attorney. We have a Virginia advanced medical directive. So there are differences between states and being able to make sure that you have documents that fit your state.

So I'm curious, Julie, Megan, if your clients are having to come back every two years for this mental health power of attorney, is this something where you literally just go back in to the healthcare power of attorney and the financial and just hit file print and have them sign new ones every two years?

Are you doing that? Are you charging for that? What does that look like from a practical standpoint?

Megan Ingram: Yeah, so we keep a database in our office of everyone who signs that mental health power of attorney and we send reminder letters when that power of attorney is coming due. And so then whenever that client would call in to sign their mental health power of attorney renewal, we ask at that time whether they have any updates to make.

If they don't, if they want to keep the same decision-makers, it is a very, very easy process for us to update it. we do charge a fee to cover our expenses for preparing that document, preparing that file, but we also ask whenever that client calls in, if they want a review appointment, if they want a full file review to double check everything else in their life, if they've had a major life event, or even not just to check in and make sure everything is good to go.

As Julie kind of mentioned, we are updating our documents all the time even if the laws are not changing, but as we're learning, Julia, you mentioned you go to those ACTEC conferences. I personally, I attend conferences regularly for The Academy of Special Needs Planners, for conferences related to special needs planning. We are regularly updating these documents as we're learning new things and consulting with other attorneys in the field.

So it's not uncommon for someone to come into our office for that mental health power of attorney renewal and we're looking at their other documents and saying, “These are still good. We've added a couple other things to these documents. Do you wanna hear what those are and see if you wanna update your documents to include those updates at this time too?”

John Mason: And there are so many nuances, Megan, with different states, and that's kind of where we're talking now on these different state plannings, or you're moving. And we deal a lot with that with our clients who retire and relocate. In Virginia, for example, I'm pretty sure I'm quoting this correctly.

Tommy, correct me if I'm wrong, is that if I have an executor who lives in Virginia, that is easier than me having an executor that lives in Pennsylvania or Florida, who would then have to physically come back to qualify potentially maybe even have to purchase a bond or if they're Virginia residents, it's a little bit easier.

Is that true? And PA is one question. And then the 2nd question is you mentioned the language and updating your documents, and I don't know, Julie, maybe this is better for you. When you draft your documents, do y'all purchase software that provides templates or do you draft your own language in these documents where you get all of your best ideas and your attorneys do that?

Julie Steinbacher: Yeah, so I'll take the drafting, the updating one in this situation. we're really proud of the fact that we do our own documents. and so I actually am one of the authors of the Pennsylvania Trust Guide. And we're not afraid to, what would I say, freehand a trust. So my law partner, Landon Hodges, it's actually his job here at the office to make any changes to any document.

So like if Megan went to The Academy of Special Needs Planners, like a new thing in special needs planning is the ABLE acts. So we didn't have any of that in our documents before because it wasn't a thing. So now we have to do it and it's his job then to take Megan's input, work on it, figure out where all it needs to go.

He does an amazing job at that. He's a graduate of Wake Forest. And Elon from North Carolina, really, it's his job as part of being here. Now we do use for our revocable living trust, we do use software, and the reason that we do that is that we couldn't possibly keep up with all the changes in the IRS rulings, and so we're really paying a Service to do that for us. and so I think that's important for people to know. And I think for our clients, they're greatly benefited by that because I think sometimes you go places and they're trying to fit that person's situation into a form, and we don't need to do that here.

We're happy to really figure out what a client's goals are and develop the language around that, that allows us to accomplish that. And especially where we live in Pennsylvania, we have a lot of land, a lot of cabins, a lot of dynasty planning where we're trying to put it down generations. And so it really, in order to do that well and to be able to do what the clients want, we need to do that.

John Mason: So it sounds like a combination of we buy some software to continually update IRS regulations with the ability to do kind of what you said is freehand a trust or like draft your internal language and your internal templates, which makes all the sense in the world. We use software.

It would make sense that y'all use software, but Tommy, I know you agree with this. It's nice to know that it's more thoughtful than Wealth Council or whatever the other off-the-shelf programs are where you fill in the blank and hit file print.

Julie Steinbacher: Right. We sort of–

Tommy Blackburn: Yeah, music to my ear to hear that we're customizing it to your situation where we're not just hitting file print and you're getting a thousand-page document.

Most of it doesn't apply to you. I'm curious. So I was wondering if we take a step back because we went into trust and avoiding probate. Perhaps maybe just a quick, why do, and is it true in Pennsylvania because probate is state-specific? Do we want to avoid probate? And why is that important?

Julie Steinbacher: Yeah, I think in all states we want to avoid probate. I would say that Pennsylvania is a little bit kindler, gentler of a state. So John, even when you were talking in that question and you talked about in Virginia, you have to have, it's more helpful if the person, the executor or the trustees in the state of Virginia. Pennsylvania, we're a little bit more lax on that.

If let's say it was my estate and I appointed John as my executor and he's in Virginia, he actually could go to a Virginia court and get sworn in. And so it's a little bit and there's no extra bond, although it used to be that way so I can hear that. But the reason for avoiding probate is for me a couple of things.

Obviously, we want to avoid the costs and the administration that goes along with that. So if you're listening, you don't even know what probate is. It's really the system by which in every state has been set up that we go in front of the court to admit a will and to say this person is my executor and then there's a bunch of rules.

So there's notices that have to go out. There's time periods that have to be complied with. And for me, that just is an unnecessary expense. So as soon as I use a trust, I'm getting rid of a lot of that. Now, state by state, it can be different because understand that the Uniform Trust Act, the code, which is in most states still requires some notices, and so there's, I wouldn't want people to listen and think you don't have to do anything with a trust, but it's less work.

The other thing is that it's harder to object against a trust, and the way that it works is if I'm in probate, I have a will, I'm in probate, and let's say I'm a stepdaughter or I'm an estrange or for whatever reason, I don't like what the will says and I want to object to it. As soon as I object to it, I bring that whole process to a screeching halt.

Like, halt. I can't do–like, so the people who are supposed to get this stuff, I can't do anything. I now have to deal with this objector and I'm in court about that and it can go out for years. I've had cases that have been 12 years over dumb stuff. I remember, I have three children, they're all raised now, but I remember like, I had a case that went through three pregnancies.

You know what I mean? It was just like, the judge says, “If she comes back, this isn't over.” But it really can happen. So when I get in a trust, if somebody wants to object, I get to continue on with the trust. It's not as easy to stop me from doing what I need to do. So, and this was really important if there's like a business involved and all of a sudden we can't operate the business, it becomes worthless for everybody.

So really important from the whole perspective, if you're going to have anybody objecting or you're concerned about anybody objecting, avoiding probate is also really beneficial and using a trust allows the person that you want to get it to be on a higher, a better footing. I also think there are, what we see so many times is that although Pennsylvania is kindler, gentler. There are many states that it's not like Florida, which we deal with a lot at our office because we have a lot of people who are Pennsylvania residents, or Florida residents.

That is a system where everything has to go back before the court. And it's very costly and very time-consuming. And for all of my clients, anybody who's listening, if you have real estate in more than one state, you always want to put that other real estate in something. Now, it could be a transfer on death deed.

It could be a trust, but in some ways we want to avoid probate so that we don't have to do what's called an ancillary probate. So that would be, let's say I'm in Pennsylvania, but I have a double-wide trailer on a piece of land in Florida. I want to put that into a trust or have it go some other way.

Otherwise, I'm going to have to do an ancillary probate in Florida. And all that does is add costs to and time.to our administration and in sitting and talking to clients, so many times, we focus on the cost, but so many times I would say that to my clients. They don't want to be a burden to their children.

They really want to set up an estate plan so it's simple and easy for their children. And in that circumstance, it's so much better if you do avoid a probate. And that doesn't mean that you're not going to not need a will ‘cause like in Pennsylvania, I can't put a car very easily into a trust. So usually we have a small probate estate, maybe a bank account, a vehicle, but then the majority of things are actually in the trust and we just administer it there.

We save time and money and that's true in all states.

John Mason: Thank you, Julie. That's, I think that's all really helpful. And as we think about trying to make things easy and avoid probate for the beneficiaries and successor people, there are so many people, and maybe 50% or more of the folks listening to this podcast, not our clients, not your clients.

But probably 50% of the people listening to this podcast don't have any documents in place right now, don't have wills, don't have powers of attorney. It's amazing how often as financial planners we see people at or near retirement who have never drafted a document before. And that's maybe they don't want to think about it.

That's maybe it never raised to the level of importance. But it also stems from the fact that maybe they had to serve as trustee or executor and it was a pain in the you know what, “because mom and dad had this big book and it was horrible and it didn't do anything for me. So by golly, I'm not doing anything. Like if it's going to be that hard, I might as well not spend the money or do anything because that was horrible.” So I feel like it's just very important for our audience to know. Step one is drafting the documents. Step two is using the documents. Step three is continuing to update the documents. And if you don't do that maintenance, you quite possibly created more work for your successor people than you would have.

Maybe that's too strong of a statement, but you're probably still better off having done something than nothing but it's certainly getting complicated if we don't keep it updated over time. Florida is very interesting to us because we have a lot of clients who snowboard to Florida. So I have many questions.

Tommy does too, I know. Maybe Megan, really quick, you can answer this question for me is would you ever only update financial power of attorneys and medical power of attorneys in Pennsylvania and leave a Virginia trust and a Virginia will, for example? Like, is there any scenario where you would ever do that? Or does it make sense to just move it all to PA?

Megan Ingram: No, I certainly would in some circumstances, especially since wills and those revocable trusts that I mentioned are some of those documents that tend to be more universal, tend to travel better. My preference is to only really update the documents that I see a need to do that. So I would say there could very easily be a situation where I am saying your financial POAs should be updated, health care powers of attorney maybe, and if the decision-makers are still who the clients would want in the wills, in the trust, we might not need to update those documents.

If they've purchased new real estate in Pennsylvania, I might just be doing a deed to put their new real estate into the trust, but otherwise, there could very easily be a situation where I could be saying, “You are in good shape. We don't need to update those rules or those trusts.”

John Mason: And what's the law? I think it's a law that says your trust is good here and there's like many states across the country. It's like the common trust law or something where you mentioned that it travels well. I just want to kind of highlight that specific legislation that says why it does travel well.

Megan Ingram: Sure, so that would be the Uniform Trust Act.

John Mason: Yes.

Megan Ingram: So, yes. So while estate planning laws tend to be very state-specific in the interest of uniformity and simplicity for individuals traveling across state lines, I'm not sure of the group of the organization that actually came up with the uniform trust law, but there's a uniform trust act and each state gets to decide whether they want to take this body of legislation and adopt it as their state's own law. If they do, they can make changes and adjustments.

So it's possible that even if states have adopted most of the Uniform Trust Act, it's possible that maybe, there is one or two things that's different that we might need to make some kind of an amendment. But overall, for the states that have adopted that code, they travel well. The laws are pretty, pretty uniform in both states because both states have adopted the Uniform Trust Act as their own laws for that state.

John Mason: Awesome. Well, here's another question. I don't know, Tommy, if this was on your radar yet, but it's certainly on my mind now because Julie, you mentioned Double Wide in Florida and it's amazing how many like co-ops are in Florida and random things where you like have a hundred-year lease but you own the trailer so I'm sure there's complications there.

But I have a client that I'm thinking of right now that religiously goes to Florida every year for three or four months. I actually have two of them. One goes in an RV, the other rents an apartment or an RV cottage or something for three months every year. They have Virginia documents. Do we need to consider, or should we consider a Florida financial power of attorney and, or a Florida advanced medical directives?

And what's the crossover point where it's like you're only there for a week? We're not going to bother you're there for three or four months every single year. Maybe we should. And y'all have, I believe a tri-state area where maybe people are going between many different states. So how do we handle that? And what do you specifically think about Florida?

Julie Steinbacher: Yeah. So I think anybody who's traveling to Florida for three months out of the year does need Florida powers of attorneys. So I think that when you're there often enough, consistently enough, you should be, and what I would, as a practice pointer to everybody, I think you go back to your Virginia attorney, or if you're from Pennsylvania, you go back to your Pennsylvania attorney and say, “Hey, I'm going to Florida.”

And we have often have clients that do that. And what I can do then is make a referral to a Florida attorney that I know that's going to just update the financial powers of attorneys and not have them update everything that may or may not be necessary. But I think that you do need that.

And the reality of it is, there is the U.S. Constitution would say that if I have a Pennsylvania power of attorney and it's good in Pennsylvania, it needs to be recognized in any other state, but practically that doesn't work well. So if I was, and I don't want people to be concerned, like if I'm driving in North Carolina, I get in a car accident.

If I have a healthcare power of attorney from Pennsylvania, that should be accepted in that state, particularly for those crises and emergencies, but it's going to be more difficult. And we don't want to have 50 powers of attorneys, right? So, but when we're in Florida that often, and there's other states, Pennsylvania's often actually, people don't travel well to us with powers of attorneys, but because ours are so wordy like they're 18 pages long, they actually might travel well to Florida. And so they may not need a new one in Florida, but there's other states like New York that have a statutory form that you may need a new attorney, a new power of attorney because there's not much in that form.

Most of it's within the law. And so that's something that people should be looking into and getting those powers of attorneys. And it's hard to say how often, John, but when you said three months, that seems to me to be significant enough that I think that it should be something that people look into.

And, that way, a power of attorney is such an important document because it's basically saying to the doctor or the medical advice, or financially, “This is the person I want you to talk to. This is my decision maker.” And it's just important and know that some states have defaults. So like Pennsylvania, the default is if I don't have a healthcare power of attorney, if they're stepchildren, stepmom or stepdad and stepchildren have equal decision-making power.

Well, maybe I want that, but maybe I don't. Maybe I want my spouse to be making my decisions and my kids not to be involved. And so, if I don't have that document, just know that you can get yourself into some odd defaults. So it's really important. powers of attorneys are the simplest documents. I do think they are the most important documents.

Because when people come to us in a crisis, It is so helpful to me if I just know who they want me to listen to. Like if they just, in the power of attorney says, “This is my decision maker,” and that's helpful because we often have people who are fighting, who maybe see things differently and I'm not sure who you would want me to trust. But if I have a power of attorney, I now know this is the person that you wanted me to listen to and so that's really helpful.

John Mason: Well, we've said for a long time, Tommy, that you can't create a will or a trust from the grave and you can't create a power of attorney or medical power of attorney when you're incapacitated.

So to Julie's point, I think all of this is obviously super relevant and timely. I'm going to call out a big fail for me. I just got back from a five-week RV trip and I didn't take my financial power of attorney or my medical directive. And we were in Pennsylvania, we were in Virginia, we were in West Virginia, we were in Kentucky and I didn't take, I didn't take a doggone thing.

And that was probably not a good thing. So I need to figure out a way that I'm going to travel with this. Tommy, this is something we need to think about with clients and then certainly bring up because calling it out, the people who are snowboarding are not necessarily young, so they're retired, they're at or near retirement, when is a mental incapacity or a financial power of attorney going to be necessary more likely for those folks than not. So this gives us a lot to think about in our practice too.

Tommy Blackburn: I will say, I think, maybe it's not a perfect solution, but I think it gives credence to one of the reasons we always tell clients we want the documents is because in that very scenario, you're traveling, we have it in our repository electronically.

So there is a little bit of a hoop to jump through that you have to get in touch with us for us to get it to you. But we are kind of that fail-safe, because not only do we want to review the documents to make sure and potentially even translate it to clients of, “Hey, this is essentially what I believe this document says.” Ask your attorney these questions if you have them. We want to make sure we coordinate with it, but also just allow us to provide that service of we're another repository for you. So if you ever need these, we can quickly get them to you. But yes, my mind went the same place, John. I was like when I'm traveling, I don't know that I've been thinking about having easy access to these.

Thankfully, you and I both can use the firm's repository. So hopefully each other, our team can help us out in those situations so we're not completely lost. I am curious as this is all fascinating conversation in the different directions we're going is say we've dotted our I's, crossed our T's, we've got everything in place then the inevitable comes to pass. And so now it's time for these documents to really get to work. And we've, hopefully, again, beneficiary, retitled. We've done our jobs there. What does it look like now? And I'm even curious when we talked about the probate question. I'm not sure if it's possible in Pennsylvania ‘cause I'm just not as familiar with Pennsylvania, but John and I have seen it in Virginia.

We do our job so well. There is no probate. There's nothing to probate. And at that point, it almost leaves some question marks of where do we go from here?

Julie Steinbacher: Yeah, so I think one of the biggest things is that people often call us right when somebody passes away. And that's great that you call us and let us know.

But don't get too concerned if we say, “Go ahead, go to the funeral, do what you have to do for your family.” There's nothing that you have to do immediately, particularly when you have a trust because we don't have to go through that probate process. So good to call the law office, but don't be too concerned if it's okay if things wait a week or a week and a half.

Now obviously if there's a business or something else, but in a typical situation, and then what we're going to want to do is we're going to want to start thinking about what does the documents actually say. So some people have taken time to say, “I want this teacup to go here, this piece of jewelry to go there, this gun to go there.”

And some people haven't, but it's very important that we think about what is written, or is it just a document that says equally, yeah, everything goes equally. And then we have to decide, well, how are we going to deal with that? Are we just going to have everybody pick one thing? Are we going to get everything appraised and people get equal amounts?

And there's more than one good answer to that question, but it's something that we want to start thinking about because to be honest with you, that's more often what people fight about is the belongings. And understand it's hard because we've all just lost somebody and we're trying to grab onto something that I'm fond of, although other people may say, “No, you're just grabbing onto that because it has a huge resale value.” Although today, nothing, none of this extra stuff has really great resale value, but we want to be thinking about what to do with the household contents and the house itself.

And I know they're not part of the documents, but just, for our listeners to be aware, that's a huge amount of time and often where people trip up is somebody goes in and they think they're being helpful and they start cleaning out the place and somebody did not want it cleaned out.

And so we find more family arguments over that. So I think it's just better to say, “Hey, have a family meeting. if I'm the trustee, this is what I think I'm going to do. Is everybody okay with that? Or do people have thoughts? Did somebody think mom said they were supposed to have the wooden spoon in the third drawer down?”

Those types of things. And so we want to deal with that quickly. And then what's going to happen is the law office is going to start sending out notices that are required by law, and they trip people up sometimes because they're like, “Why am I getting this notice?” Well, the law says you have to.

So you get a copy of the trust, a copy of the will. and it's not all that helpful because it doesn't say how much money. And then really the next part of it is identifying all the assets. So at our office, one of the things that we do is we not just do the documents. We also help people fund and we have a working list of their assets.

So we can really help people identify here's where all these assets are. But for some people, they don't have that. And so we're literally looking at old tax returns to see where we were getting interest income from, or we're waiting for stuff to come in the mail. Or we're trying to get into passwords, online systems because we really have to identify how much stuff is out there.

And if you're listening, one of the biggest things that takes a huge amount of time, having a good list somewhere, many financial advisors offices do that quite well, and we need to know that, but then we'll have people who have one extra account they didn't tell somebody about, but it's really hard for us to find that account, so if you don't want to share it with your kids now, please write it down somewhere, have a list because that's going to take, whoever is your trustee time, and it's a little bit of a scavenger hunt because we don't really know, and then once we figure out what all is there, I think then, understanding what the process is. So in some states, we have an inheritance tax or an estate tax.

We have to be paying those things. We have to worry about income tax issues. So we spend a lot of time working with people, if it's an annuity or an IRA, understanding the income tax issues that come along with that. And I think, again, if you were the trustee, the best thing is to employ a law firm that's going to be very proactive about those things.

So we're very proactive. We let people know, “Okay, the Secure Act says you can take this out over 10 years. Here's what it looks like if you take it out right now.” And we really help people fill out those claim forms because the claim forms are asking, do I want it all at once? If I had to pay all the tax on it, that may not be the best thing to do and so we kind of want to go through those. So I think being a trustee also requires gathering that information and then also letting the beneficiaries know what to expect on their own tax returns. Now, just so everybody knows, the fact that you're making an inheritance, there's no tax. So if I have a bank account, like it was a CD, and I give that to all the kids, there's no income tax on that.

But there are things like annuities and IRAs that are income irrespective of decedent, and that means that there's some income tax still in there. And so we need to make sure. So for the trustee, you might be listening, thinking, “Oh, wow, this is a lot of work.” And kind of what I'm saying to you, though, it's not as much work if your parents had it well planned and you use advisors that are proactive.

So at my office, we very much collaborate with like if it was one of a client that John and Tommy were working with, we'd be calling them and we'd be coordinating behind the scenes so that we can say to you, “Here's what we suggest, here's our recommendation,” or we would be talking to people about it, individual beneficiaries about their individual situations to decide what needs to be done. So you really should lean on those professionals. I always feel bad for people who come And they decide not to use our office because they want to save the money. It's just not a good thing to do. Listen, I do this every day and I know where the pitfalls are and how to deal with people. I don't change a tire or change my brakes in my car every day. I certainly use a professional to do that. And so–

John Mason: it's a great analogy, Julie. And the state administration's not getting any easier. Like, I think one of you mentioned, or both of you mentioned Secure Act 2.0 and like, at the end of the day, there's Secure 3.0 that's likely coming. The rules on RMDs are bifurcated and I mean, Tommy and I have joked around and it's only a joke. Clients, if you're listening, but we're like, “We need to retire before all of our clients pass away because a state administration is hard and it's only going to continue to get harder.”

So, we just joke around about that if you're a client listening, but it's certainly, yeah, Roth conversions and it's a lot to think about. So don't sign anything yet, right? So don't sign a beneficiary claim form. Don't sign anything until you've had a qualified financial planner, an estate planning firm, an estate administration office guide you through this.

If you find yourself 60 years old with a 90-year-old parent, like, they're from the Great Depression, they're hiding stuff from you. Like, we gotta find it, right? And then don't do that to your kids. So, we need a treasure map. We need to look in floorboards and coat pockets and refrigerators. We need a treasure map.

Don't sign anything, no rush on any of this, but also I find, I think we find, Tommy, that a lot of times there are, I'm going to use that loosely, professionals and quotes, like they are professionals. They do add some value, but they're not staying up with the times. And they're quoting AB Trust from the 90s or they don't know the new estate tax limits or they're not familiar with Secure Act 2.0 and then certainly not familiar with the IRS recently proposed or clarification on certain things of Secure Act 2.0. So, people can look you eyeball to eyeball and say things that are very confident, “This is how it works.” And in fact, they're just loud and wrong. It's really hard as a consumer to know who to trust because there are people who are convicted that the 1990 rules or the 2014 rules are the same rules of today.

It's just not the case and you have to be careful as a consumer on where you're getting your advice from. And I don't know if you guys see that in PA, but we certainly see it, Tommy, here. The people that have the highest conviction. I almost say, I'm talking too much, you know how you have a good person?

If you say, “Oh my goodness, Secure Act 2.0 is really complicated, and this is going to take us a long time.” If somebody can just like answer your questions emphatically, really loud immediately, you probably want to caution that like maybe you aren't familiar with all the complications that just came out.

Tommy Blackburn: Yeah, you should have thought about the question a little bit more before you answered. yeah, I guess as I think about like one of the things that's frustrating to me is you have professionals or people out there and it's like we're happy to do the front part of the work, but now when we get into this, okay, it's time to execute like they've passed and now we're nowhere to be seen and if we are even willing to answer the phone or answer an email about it, it's very flippant to your point or it's just not, it's just not helpful.

And it just, it's like, where are you now? We need you to help actually execute on this. It seemed like you just wanted to do the work on the front end. I was thinking as we, this was all great. Julie took us like, here's all the proactive and like the 10-year plan and everything we need to be thinking through, which is great, as well as like, take a pause and don't rush into it.

I was thinking of starting a little more granular even of just, or like right at the beginning of, I think a lot we can't do or could be wrong. It seems like death certificate, like we got to get a death certificate before that kind of seems to kick off a lot, I think. And I, yeah, I'm just trying to lay it back.

Like, if you've never been through this, here's kind of what the very beginning of this process looks like. And then there's a lot of thought to be done on the back end. So I think a death certificate and then yes, it's those notifying the institutions and claiming, which we need to be very careful depending upon the type of asset that we're dealing with there.

And one of the questions I had, Julie, when you've had your technical difficulty for a second was, well, we see sometimes a job that you've encountered it is we've done our job so well that there's no probate estate, which seems great, but then we run into like little questions of like, well, who signs the final tax return, because usually, it's the executor, but we don't have, or Executrix and I don't know if Pennsylvania uses the same terminology, but we don't have that, as well as if there's a trust, a trust tax return. So just thinking through some little things like that. I think there was something else that come back to me on this, but that's kind of almost what I–oh, as I segue all over the place, does Pennsylvania, I assume every state does, court accountings if we have certain situations?

Julie Steinbacher: Yeah, absolutely. So, in most states, if you can have a family settlement agreement, so it's like an informal accounting if everybody agrees and signs off, but we would need a formalized accounting, which are difficult to do. Now, there are states, like I know New Hampshire is one of the states, that you need a formalized accounting pretty much in every situation even if it's kind of more informal and everybody's agreeing, you still have to submit that in front of the court.

There's many states that are that way, but Pennsylvania is a state that if everybody's agreeing and we can just have everybody sign an agreement informally, and we call them family settlement agreements, so that can be helpful. But please know there's many states that you still have to go through that formality.

And unfortunately, in some states, they really tie the hands of the attorneys, making it so they can get paid until the end, and setting what the fees can be. And a state administration isn't just all of what we're talking about today. In today's world, it's so much more from even getting what used to be simple a claim form.

Even if I know how to fill it out correctly, and I send it to a company. It used to be they just got the form, accepted it, and sent the check. And today I could send that same form three times before they do anything and I could be waiting a good amount of time for that. But there's also huge issues right now with, we advise our clients about this, about ghost hacking.

So in our office, we're not just dealing with all of what we're talking about here. Immediately we contact the three credit reporting agencies and report that the person has passed away. And the reason that we do that, and I have been doing that at my office for at least the last 10 years, because unfortunately we had two estates in one year.

Remember, when somebody dies and we report things at the courthouse. It's their date of birth. It's everything that you would need. Their social security numbers. And there's even, there's a whole big thing now about what they would call ghost hacking, which is really identity of stealing the identity of somebody who's passed away.

And there's credence right now we're talking about at our office. This did come from an ACTEC meeting I was at, and kind of really thought about it, but you know, maybe people shouldn't put so much information in obituaries. Because your mother's maiden name in the obituary, all of what your password combinations are right there.

So what I would say to you too, is that we focus on these like things that must be done, but our firm, we're also really trying to help people understand what the potential threats are out there and best practices. And so we contact the three credit reporting agencies. It's not hard to do.

It's a letter. And then no credit can be taken out in that person’s name. And since my office started doing that, we haven't had a single decedent who's had their identity stolen. Yet that is just rampant out there right now. And so I think that's important when we think about what it is that the advisors that you're working with do for administration.

I think complying with the rules and the laws are important, but also understanding what those threats are or what the potential hazards are just as important.

John Mason: Wow. I mean, I just never thought like I, my credits frozen and if we end up going to buy our third car for our family like we've been talking about on another episode, maybe I would do a loan.

Maybe I pay cash, figure it out off to unfreeze my credit for seven days to get the car loan approved. I never thought about like notifying the credit agencies at death and this whole concept of ghost hacking is fascinating. So we've learned something from this that we'll implement. How do we do this at our office?

So this is a long episode. Thanks for staying with us, audience, and clients, and everyone. What we do at Mason & Associates, so the funeral home is typically going to notify social security. So that's a done deal. All the stuff Megan and Julie have talked about, that's something we know we need to do.

Then we have military. So, we have Defense Finance Accounting Service. We have the Veterans Administration. We have Office of Personnel Management. At Mason & Associates, we can help you notify all of those agencies so that we can claim your Federal Employees Group Life basic insurance so that we can activate your survivor benefits.

Know that it may take six months to a year to activate that survivor benefit pension. So making sure we have access to TSP IRA, those life insurance policies, social security should take care of itself. You should end up getting the higher of the two, but it doesn't hurt to run it past your financial planner to make sure that you're getting the right number when your spouse has passed away. So ghost hacking is fascinating. I think both of you have mentioned this. We're not really worried about estate taxes as much anymore, at least at the federal level as we are income tax. That's more of what we're managing. Maybe some quick hit questions here.

I have no probate estate. I hired Megan. Megan have done a phenomenal job. And this is for Megan or Julie, we've done a phenomenal job. Our firms work together. We have zero probate. Do I even need to do anything with the will?

Megan Ingram: It's very possible that even if probate is not needed, there are still some taxes due.

Specifically in Pennsylvania, we have inheritance tax. So even if at the federal level we're not concerned about a state tax, I usually try to break it down that someone's estate can kind of be thought of as two different things. There's someone's probate estate, which is the assets they passed away in their own name, and how do we get ownership of that asset to the ownership of the beneficiary?

But then someone's taxable estate and what is subject to tax, especially state inheritance tax, if that's applicable in someone's state, could be very different. In Pennsylvania, Julie mentioned life insurance is not subject to Pennsylvania state inheritance tax here, but pretty much everything else is.

There are some other exceptions. They apply very narrowly to folks. So even if we don't have to go through probate, very likely that we do have to file some kind of an inheritance tax return or do something in order to make sure that those taxes are paid and everything is reported correctly to the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue.

John Mason: So this may be a big difference between Virginia and Pennsylvania. We may have to follow up with our local folks to figure out, like, what do we do if there is no probate and no inheritance tax? There are some times where it's like, you need to sign a form as the executor, like Tommy said, but you never physically had to qualify as executor and there literally is no executor.

Or there's a small state affidavit that said you never, nobody had to qualify. And it feels like sometimes the better job you do, you're almost penalized because there is no roadmap for the people that did a really good job, and then you show up to the clerk of courts and they don't necessarily know the answer. You go see a teller at XYZ credit union, and it's the wild west out there.

Tommy Blackburn: I think, too, what's interesting is we see, to John's point, in Virginia, at least, which it sounds like maybe Pennsylvania is different enough because of the inheritance tax issue, that we seem to record a will even though it's never going to go through probate.

So it could be very well there's not a probate estate, nobody's going to qualify as executor, but for some reason, I guess just to put it on record, we record the will, I guess so that nothing comes up to chow, I'm not honestly sure why that's part of our process. I just know we still go record the will, even though we're never going to go through probate because we did our job well.

So I don't know if that's something similar in Pennsylvania, if there is like the difference of like recording it versus going through the qualification. And do you see somebody always qualifying is like, regardless, but it's like this is going to go through the court system and you will be granted the authority as an executor or is there times where that's, it's not a thing in Pennsylvania either.

John Mason: And to piggyback on that, Tommy, I'm pretty sure, Julie, that if Spouse 1 leaves money to Spouse 2, there's no inheritance tax in PA between spouses. So maybe we can answer this question in the context of a surviving spouse. Would we have to record a will in Pennsylvania if Spouse 1 dies?

Julie Steinbacher: Yeah. So typically not. and there are even situations where we have done our job and we don't have to record the will, in Pennsylvania. So, we always like to see what that is and as Tommy brought up, there are situations where it's like, well, who's going to sign this? but typically we're going to defer back then to the trustee of the RLT.

So whether that's IRS stuff, the form 56, we're going to refer back to that trustee where the bulk of the things are. And in Pennsylvania, we either probate the will or we don't ever record it. We used to. Years ago, we used to record them, but today we would not, we would, there would be no reason to go through that expense.

John Mason: So I guess the kind of the takeaway here for our audience is it's not as simple as you think. It's very state specific and at the end of the day, it's worth, in our opinion, I think the four of us on this podcast episode today would agree that you should probably hire somebody because we've said it at Mason Associates for decades now, you only live, retire, and die once.

We've done these things hundreds, if not thousands of times through our clients. And those experiences, and Julie and Megan, you're doing the same thing in Pennsylvania on the wealth preservation, the long term care planning, the estate planning, the estate administration, that if one has, we just, we released an episode recently titled Activate Millionaire Powers.

And it's this whole idea of like getting out of your own way and using resources to make your life easier. like it's time to activate millionaire powers, pay somebody to help you through this process that hopefully you only have to do one or two times in your life. There's no reason other than we're being penny-wise and pound-foolish to go with this alone.

Julie Steinbacher: And the money that people can save is amazing to me. And for some of it, for those of you looking for an estate administration attorney or looking for an advisor, I think the key is that people forget the income taxes. And so for me, understanding that you should have an attorney that knows something about income taxes or collaborates with your accountant, with your financial advisor.

You have to have somebody on your team that understands that. Because you could be a beneficiary and you could be getting Medicare and Social Security yourselves and all of a sudden, you cash this out in one year and don't realize that's going to affect how much you're paying for Medicare.

So just knowing that it's more complex, I think is important, but I piggyback on John in that the amount of money I feel like we save people by helping them make a good plan and how to administer it, I think, is just amazing.

John Mason: Well, it's certainly music to our ears hearing you throw out things like Irma and Medicare thresholds, et cetera.

I guess as we were, I have one more question that maybe we can transition to action items and some takeaways from this podcast, how long does this typically take? And I'll frame this context in the question of my mom or dad just passed away. I am busy. I'm a professional. I've got kids. I've got all kinds of stuff going on. And now I have to serve in this capacity. Is this something that I'm going to be able to finish in a week? Do I just really grind hard and do this? Is it something that I need to have patience? How long and drawn out is this process going to be? What do I need to, arms and legs inside the cart at all times, buckle up, it's going to take how long?

Julie Steinbacher: Yeah, I think we actually tell our clients that can take two years. Now I have to say that some of that has to do with Pennsylvania inheritance tax, but I think it's not good to think that we're going to do this quickly and it's going to be done in a week or a month.

I do think a year is a good amount of time. And that doesn't mean that you can't do it faster. It doesn't mean that every. But again, when we think about having to identify assets, then understand a little bit about our beneficiaries and get our beneficiaries to be all kind of ready to accept this and do the best job for them.

So it could be people's siblings, and understanding that, I like to meet with my clients once a month and we move things forward. So think about not so much how quickly can I get it done, but am I continuing to move it forward and making good decisions. but you know, I'm definitely a person that values completeness and I'm detail-oriented so that's why that matters to me. And please understand if you're listening, this is not about the probate situation where you can't get it. The money's there.

We're just trying to be thoughtful about how we're collecting it. So it's not like it's in a probate situation where the account's frozen I literally can't pay my mom's—the money's here. We just want to think about what makes the most sense, especially when we're talking about a million-dollar IRA.

Well, let's give that some thought. Let's give some thought about, and it could be that different beneficiaries want different things, and I think that's okay. So let's help them. Because they could be in different situations. Some could be people in college. And it would make no sense at all to take out IRA money and reduce the amount of money they get, their kids get for help for college.

So I think thinking about it as a year-long process allows people to change their expectations. Also, if you're a busy professional, you don't have to do everything at once. There's nothing saying that, like deal with the house, deal with the belongings, deal with what's at the thing, the other things can be done moving forward. And I think sometimes too, I feel bad for the person who is the trustee or has to do all of this, and other family members are saying, “Let's get this all done yesterday.”

And, “I want my money.” And, really, we want at the end of the day, the most amount of money to be passed through in the simplest manner possible.

John Mason: Maybe that's a good action item is be patient, know that it's going to take at least 12 months. And then if you are serving as trustee or executor, actively communicate that to the beginning to anybody else who stands to inherit like I'm not dragging my feet. I'm committed to doing this. It's going to take 12 months. I understand that you just got a winning lotto ticket or whatever, but like I'm going to do a professional job. I'm going to hire these people and it's going to take 12 months.

And my intent is not to keep your money. I'm not making money on your money. These things just take time and I think level setting those expectations, you just became trustee, set the appropriate expectations for yourself, and all the people who now you have a fiduciary responsibility to. We've never had a client get mad at us when we set expectations and we delivered.

The only time a client gets mad is if you don't set expectations and you don't deliver based on what their expectations were, right? But if everybody's on the same page and everybody has the same expectations and you hit your deadlines, or you miss a deadline and you say, “I missed it, here's why I'm sorry.”

Those are all much better conversations than when two people have never communicated freely about how this is going to work. So, Megan, Julie, thank you. Awesome content. Let's go around, I say around the table, let's go around the table here. Any closing thoughts, action items, takeaways for listeners on the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast?

Megan Ingram: So, I'll get started and I will just again repeat from the planning end of things. I will always recommend that anyone either get their estate planning documents in place or set those reminders with your estate planning attorney anytime there's a major life event or regularly to be checking in and making sure your plan is still the best plan to make sure things are going to pass in the way that you want them to for your beneficiaries upon your passing.

Julie Steinbacher: And I'll just jump on that and add, really think about communicating and how important communication is in this whole process. So if you're on and you're making your own plan, one of the things we do at our office is we always offer a family meeting. So get, and I know it's hard because some people like don't want their kids to know their assets, don't want them to know what they're doing. But I would say to you, as the person sitting on the other side of the table, it works so much better when the other when the person that you've put in charge does know, gets into the loop, especially after one spouse dies and the other spouse needs some help.

But the same is true even at death, communication is so important. So if you are the child or the person that was chosen to be the trustee, to be the executor, you're often chosen because maybe your parents think you were the peacekeeper or you were going to be very good at it, and understand that your job is also communicating then with whoever else the beneficiaries are and I think all the way around most, I was court appointed for years. I think most problems in estates come from a lack of communication or miscommunication. So I would just add communication is really important.

Tommy Blackburn: I love that. Yes, communication is key. We, a lot of what you're saying are same principles that we try to instill in our clients of if you're, particularly if you're going to put somebody in this fiduciary role, you should give them the benefit of knowing ahead of time what you want this to look like, where the documents, the assets, let them know what they're up against and it is somewhat comical in my mind when people look at it as like it's an honor to be an executor or a trustee.

Like, I don't know if it's an honor. It seems this is, it's service is what it is. And it, but if you're going to do something, do that to somebody, I think you owe it to them to have a plan and communicate the plan, and I think my takeaway, John, would be you just, you can't really put a value on having experts involved in your life particularly if you have those millionaire powers, you should be activating. I love what we do with our ongoing relationship with clients in that I think we can be that continuity of getting the plan in place and then when you're no longer here, already being familiar and being able to add a lot of efficiency and just, again, be that source of continuity of here's where things are.

Here's what our understanding is of what they wanted as well as the documents. Like, let us help guide you through this ‘cause everything I've heard through today's communication, so we can help facilitate communication as well as it can be fairly complicated. So don't, you don't have to go this on your own.

If you're proactive, you have that relationship ahead of time. We can make it a lot less painful.

John Mason: Having a relationship with an estate planning firm or a financial planning firm, and we've been hired so many times when Spouse 1 manages the money, Spouse 2 doesn't. And they've actually hired us so that when Spouse 1 dies, Spouse 2 knows they have somebody they can turn to.

I mean, how many times I've heard that in my career? It's like it's worth the fee to know that the plan doesn't end when I end. That there is continuity in the plan. So establishing a relationship with a firm, both financial planning and estate planning is important. It's never too early to hire a financial planner.

Find one who's going to meet you where you are. It's never too early to hire an estate planning attorney. If you're going to college, literally if you're 18, you need an estate planning attorney to do financial power of attorney and medical directives. The second you're having a baby, we need to talk about who's going to be the guardian, who's going to manage the money for the kids.

Your estate planning needs change as you change. So maybe, Megan and Julie, I'm sure you guys do, but maybe you only specialize with older clients. Find a law firm who specializes with younger families. So that's, it's never too early to do that. Don't be worried about things taking longer than you think they're going to.

It's going to be a long drawn-out process. Make sure you notify the homeowner's insurance company. If a house is vacant, make sure we understand how all of that's going to work and then understand hopefully you're in a position that you can afford to pay the funeral bill, that you can afford to pay the tax bill, that you can help front some of this if you don't have immediate access to estate funds or trust funds.

You will be reimbursed at the end of the day for the costs associated with you having to administer it, assuming there's money there at the end. So these are things that we've found that often really kind of drag you down. And we just hope that we were able to alleviate some of those concerns.

We hope that this podcast provides insight into everything estate planning, everything administration, and also what does it mean if you spend time in other states or end up moving to a new state and retirement. We thank you so much for being with us on another episode of the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast.

If you'd like our content, do all the things for us, like subscribe, share, hit the bell notification, send us an email to MasonFP like Mason Financial Planning @masonllc.net. We will certainly link Steinbacher, Goodall & Yurchak estate planning firm in the show notes. If you're Pennsylvania, consider reaching out to them for your estate planning needs.

Megan, Julie, thank you so much for being with us on this episode.

Julie Steinbacher: Thanks for having us. It was wonderful.

Thank you.

John Mason: Well, thanks everybody again for being here. Thank you to our audience. Thank you to our clients who are listening. Please, if you know somebody who's going through this, meaning they have an elderly parent who's about to pass away, they've just found themselves as trustee or executor, share this podcast with them.

We've said it for a long time at Mason & Associates, you can be somebody's hero by just sharing what we're doing. They don't need to necessarily hire us. But if you share this episode, you're going to change somebody's life and you're going to make it better for that family. So thanks again for being with us on the Federal Employee Financial Planning Podcast.

The topics discussed on this podcast represent our best understanding of federal benefits and are for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be construed as investment, financial planning, or other professional advice.

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