• There is dealing with your Living Trust real estate when you sell or refinance that property.
• There is the selection of key players – the managers, agents, and protectors – upon which depends the success or failure of your Living Trust and your inheritance instructions.
• There is the operation and management of the Living Trust when the first spouse dies (the deceased spouse).
• There is the protection of the surviving spouse’s ownership and control of the Living Trust assets during that spouse’s incapacity or incompetence.
• There is the operation and management of the Living Trust when the last spouse (the surviving spouse) dies.
• There is the filing of the last spouse’s estate tax return and payment of estate taxes.
• There is the distribution of the Living Trust assets to your children without creating conflict and chaos between them.
• And there is the protection of your children’s Living Trust inheritance from the winds of their fates: their addictions, divorces, remarriages, mental disabilities, financial immaturity, and creditors.
It does not matter whether you have played the big game before or whether you already have your Living Trust. After you read The Living Trust Advisor playbook, you will know how to play the big game the way it should be played. If you follow my training and listen to my advice, I believe you will walk away from the big game a winner. In my book, winning means:
• Having a clearer understanding of your Living Trust.
• Opening your eyes to the numerous problems and issues in the inheritance arena that you must consider before your first meeting with your Living Trust lawyer.
• Maintaining ownership and control of your Living Trust assets while you and your spouse are both alive, and then after the death of one spouse.
• Facilitating the smooth transfer of your Living Trust assets to your children, grandchildren, and other heirs after your death.
• Identifying potential inheritance problem areas now so you have the opportunity to build solutions into your Living Trust in order to prevent those problems from arising during your life and after your death.
A Few Things You Should Know about My Coaching Style
Before I say something trite right now like “Let the big game begin!” I must first convey a few things you should know about my style of coaching in order to help you follow the instructions in this playbook.
Throughout this book, I will pepper you with numerous examples that illustrate a key point or demonstrate how you can do something. While many of these examples may be drawn from experiences with clients, others may provide you with an occasional glimpse into my personal life. Whether I allude to my business history, divorce, girlfriend, or likes and dislikes, I use these personal anecdotes as a device to support certain issues or emphasize particular concepts that arise in this book.
While I understand the viewpoint that divulging one’s personal anecdotes and professional experiences may be unprofessional, I have always disagreed with it. I believe that providing examples and sharing details that have arisen in my personal life and law practice bring this nonfiction book about estate planning alive and make the advice offered applicable to your life, too.
Therefore, you are not getting a technical lecture filled with charts, graphs, and PowerPoint slides within this book. Instead, you are receiving the advice and opinions of one attorney based on his observations and experiences – both professional and personal. With such a subjective approach, it is near impossible to convey effective lessons by keeping the private life out of the process.
I am fond of broad and superlative statements that appear to be intended to apply universally to every reader of this book. Of course, I know that for every person who embodies such an absolute, there is another person for whom that absolute does not apply. Nonetheless, in order to help convey information and emphasize a particular point, a statement must come across as somewhat dogmatic without reference to exceptions. Therefore, the sweeping generalization is a literary device I often employ in The Living Trust Advisor.
The Living Trust, family inheritance planning, and estate taxes involve complex personal and financial issues. But discussing these issues in a legal manner would ensure this book’s quick demise and bargain- basement status, as it would render the book a somewhat lackluster and uninteresting read. Moreover, if I used fancy legal jargon, I fear that many readers might not understand what I was saying. Therefore, I use nontechnical language to explain many technical concepts throughout this book. For example, the person whom you appoint to carry out your instructions after your death is called the successor trustee. In this book, I refer to that person as the after-death agent. Since your attorney might wonder what you are talking about if you mention appointing your after-death agent, I also supply the technical term.
At my seminars, there are two compliments that I can never get enough of. The first: “Gee, Mr. Condon, are you sure you’re a lawyer? I understood every word you said.” The second: “Mr. Condon, I never thought I would find myself laughing at a seminar on death and taxes. I was really entertained.”
I’m not using these comments to wow you into buying this book or attending my seminars. I’m just trying to show you that I have found success in using humor as the medicine to help folks digest this material more easily, and that this book follows suit with my usual comedic approach.
I have an absurd sense of humor, and this book is riddled with it. With a title like The Living Trust Advisor, you probably would not expect to find such a quality in an inheritance planning book. I am aware that some readers may not find it appropriate to address death-and-taxes-type matters with a comedic approach. However, I could not restrain myself, for two reasons. First, I just gotta be me. Second, approaching such a tedious subject as the Living Trust with humor simply makes that matter less tedious and, if I have my way, even entertaining.
This book is designed to identify situations, problems, and conflicts that arise in the establishment, maintenance, and distribution of your Living Trust. However, because your set of circumstances may differ from the scenarios I describe, it is critical that you do not include any of my suggestions in your own Living Trust without first consulting your own Living Trust attorney.
Your Final Locker Room Pep Talk Before Training Begins
I was on water polo and swim teams throughout high school and college. I remember some amazing locker room pep talks made by my coaches that took us from lackadaisical (“What are we doing here?”) to motivated and focused on the mission (“Let’s go get ‘em!”). Inspired by those sessions in those days of yore, I now want to give you my pep talk to motivate you throughout your training.
You are about to embark on a process that is more than just dollars and cents. Your Living Trust is the last great lesson you will give to your spouse, children, and other beneficiaries. It is the vehicle by which you transfer your lifetime of accumulations to them. If your Living Trust lesson goes sour – by leaving your beneficiaries in conflict, or by causing your assets to be depleted by taxes and expenses, or by requiring that your beneficiaries go through probate to obtain ownership of your Living Trust assets, or by causing your Living Trust assets to become depleted once they are in the hands of your beneficiaries – so too will the memory of you be impaired.
But it does not have to be that way. That’s what I – your Living Trust coach – am here for. That’s why you have this Living Trust Advisor playbook in your hands. With this book, you will learn all you ever need to know about how to play the Living Trust game – from the time the concept of the Living Trust enters your head to the time its inheritance instructions are carried out after you and your spouse are gone.