According to the court in Armstrong v. Armstrong, a 2015 Mississippi case, a paranoid schizophrenic who kills his 80 year-old mother with a crochet-covered brick, repeatedly stabs her, and then bleeds the body to prepare it for burial, might still inherit, since a willful killing under the state’s slayer statute requires not being completely insane. (Courtesy of Steve R. Akers, senior fiduciary counsel at Bessemer Trust)
Quote for the Day
April 19, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Need a good story for a speech? Here’s one, courtesy of Bessemer Trust’s Steve R. Akers speaking at a CLE seminar I attended today at the Utah Bar in Salt Lake City. He got the story from Conrad Teitell, who spoke at this year’s Heckerling Institute (an annual estate planning conference) in Orlando:
A son wanted to get his mother a special gift for her birthday. He decided on a parrot to keep her company. He called his mother later to ask how she liked her birthday present. She said, “It was delicious. My friend Louise and I got together and . . . ” The son exclaimed, “Mother, that was a rare parrot, taught by an interpreter at the United Nations to speak 14 languages.” His mother quietly responded, “He should have said something.”
Have a nice day.
You Want to Be Successful? Try Massive Action!
April 18, 2016 by Leave a Comment
This is a little off topic, so please indulge me.
When I’m not practicing law, I teach writing at Brigham Young University. Today in my Writing & Rhetoric 150 class, my students did what I refer to as Power of Words presentations. These are essentially 7-minute oral presentations about how words have affected the student’s life for good or for bad. The presentations are accompanied by some sort of Power Point or other visual. One student used the white board for his presentation, a talk about what he had learned from his mission president about how to become successful. (For those unfamiliar with Mormon missionary service, young men and women often serve 1 1/2 to 2 years as missionaries far from home, often in foreign lands. Mission presidents and their spouses serve as leaders of those young people. I served a mission long ago in Brazil. My mission president had been a district attorney in Los Angeles before he was asked to serve as my mission president. Three years later, he returned to the DA’s office.)
Now back to my story. My student explained that his mission president wrote the following acronym on a piece of paper: ODOR – PAL.
“ODOR – PAL?” the student wondered.
The mission president continued:
O = Outcome – state what you want to achieve and do it positively.
D = Date – set a date for when you want to achieve that outcome.
O = Obstacles – what stands in your way?
R = Resources – what tools, talents, and friends do you have to help you achieve the outcome?
ODOR is all about the preliminaries, the thinking, the dreaming. Then comes PAL, where all the action takes place:
P = Planning – develop a realistic course of action, map out how you’re going to get to your desired outcome.
A = Massive Action – not just any action, action on a grand scale.
L = Leverage – use what motivates you–money, prestige, honor, whatever–to energize you to carry out your plan.
Now, a lot of this is good old Self-Help 101. I’ve read and heard advice like this a thousand times. But I have to tell you that as my student continued talking, my mind fixated on the A, the Massive Action. More to the point, the word Massive. Actually, the word stood out even larger. MASSIVE! The white board almost yelled at me.
I consider myself a man of action, but today I realized that my problem is that often, I’m too timid, willing to take a chance but unwilling to risk too much of myself. I realized that when I have been successful, whether in business or in other aspects of my life, it’s almost always been because the adjective MASSIVE made an appearance. I leave it to you to decide what massive means to you. I know what it means to me, and I know where I need to apply it.
Quote for the Day
April 17, 2016 by Leave a Comment
“A trust can be an effective foundation for asset protection planning. Trusts have been utilized for centuries as a means of conserving and protecting property for the beneficiaries of the trust. However, most domestic trusts do not provide protection from creditors. The typical revocable living trust, where the trustors are the lifetime beneficiaries and retain the power to revoke, amend and invade the principal of the trust, provides no protection whatsoever against the creditors of the trustors. Accordingly, absent specific legislation to the contrary, self-created or so-called self-settled trusts are ineffective for asset protection planning purposes.”
“A Primer On Asset Protection Planning,” Jeffrey Matson and Jonathan Mintz, WealthCounsel Quarterly, April 2015
Don’t Put Off Till Tomorrow . . .
April 16, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Yesterday I read an interview in the April 2016 issue of WealthCounsel Quarterly with Neel Shah, a business and estate planning attorney in Monroe, New Jersey. The last interview question was of particular interest to me, because occasionally I find myself wondering whether I’m simply selling something when I encourage people to do their estate and business planning, preferably with me. By simply selling I mean selling something they don’t really need. I know better, of course. I’ve seen too many cases where what should have been planned hadn’t been, and people got hurt, loved ones left in a lurch as a consequence.
And I’m not alone, I discovered–yet again. In response to the question, “Can you point to a particular experience that has changed the way you approach your practice?” Shah told the story of a client who had come to him to do some simple will planning. He was young, in the prime of his life. He had some 20 interconnected businesses. They all seemed to be doing well, and the client, Shah says, “looked like he was on top of the world.”
Less than six weeks later, the client was dead–before Shah and he had been able to do much planning. It was then that Shaw discovered that all was not well. The client’s businesses were in hock–for those unfamiliar with the term, they were in debt up to their gills. His personal life wasn’t much better. He had a child from a short-term relationship and other family members he wanted to provide for with his wealth, but in short order his “empire” came crashing down, his dreams for others unfulfilled. As Shaw reports:
“What I saw in that client was the prototypical business owner who simple couldn’t make time to get his planning in order. He had told me that he wanted to provide for his nieces and nephews and he believed–and all evidence supported–that he had many more years ahead of him. His example showed me just how quickly and dramatically things can change.
“By seeing through that client how fragile life can be, now I don’t hesitate to grab a client by the collar and shake them into reality. I also don’t feel like I’m ‘selling’ anything anymore. I feel a lot more like an emergency room physician, telling clients that their business is in dire need of help. After seeing what happens when clients drag their feet, I now have a greater sense of urgency on their behalf. It has made me more passionate in my conversations with clients, and more aggressive in advocating the importance of moving ahead to get good planning in place.”
Somewhere else on this site, I write that the cost of planning is greatly outweighed by the cost of not planning. This story vividly illustrates that point. I could tell more. Want to hear them?
When Dave Ramsey’s Wrong, He’s Really Wrong
April 15, 2016 by Leave a Comment
I’ve listened to Dave Ramsey. My wife owns a couple of his books. I get what he does, and I think he probably does a some good–in the debt area, at least. But he’s not always right. For example, I don’t care for some of his opinions about life insurance and much of his investment advice is off the mark as well. Further, his one-size-fits-all approach and his dismissive attitude towards insurance agents and other financial advisors are a real turn off for me. Seems that everybody’s out to get you but Dave and those he recommends. (I have more to say on this point, but I won’t.)
In short, I’m basically not a fan.
So you will not be surprised that I’m posting this link to a blog post by attorney Richard Chamberlain in response to a wildly uniformed excerpt about living/revocable trusts from one of Dave’s books. Make sure to read the entire post and the links in the post.
I must add my two cents on living/revocable trusts: Though they are just one part of a well-executed estate plan, they are an important part. Among many good reasons to establish a living/revocable trust, there’s this: setting one up and funding it will help you and yours get your minds around what you own, how you own it, and how you want it distributed or handled upon your death or incapacity. Mind you, I could add more than two cents to this conversation, but I’ll stop here.
Quote for the (Business) Day
April 14, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Professor, attorney, and author of Business Planning: Closely Held Enterprises, Dwight Drake has some useful advice for would-be entrepreneurs:
“When the entrepreneurial bug bites a group of charged-up business owners, they usually are focused on making the business succeed, maximizing revenues, and minimizing expenses. They have little interest in discussing potential breakups, the risks of the three big “Ds”— death, disability and divorce — and all the other issues that should be addressed in a well-structured buy-sell agreement. A good advisor will help the owners look at the big picture and consider the entire life cycle of the business.
“Business owners need to prepare early for the day when they will part company for whatever reason. At some point down the road, they are each going to want to or have to cash out their equity interest in the business. Somebody is going to leave the business, die, become disabled, or experience a messy divorce. Plus, the owners should acknowledge the simple reality that no matter how good they feel about one another going into the enterprise, tough business decisions may create friction along the way. Friction often leads to a buyout or, worse yet, a legal blowup.
“Potential separation issues are best addressed in a calm, planning-oriented atmosphere, not at the point of crisis. Preferably, the job should be done at the outset of the business when all parties are making important decisions to devote capital and energy to the business enterprise. Encouraging clients to collectively think about the key issues up front often will bring to the surface diverse expectations that may surprise everyone. It usually helps to have these expectations out in the open before irrevocable commitments are made to the venture. Too often, the parties plunge ahead with little regard for the consequences of their inevitable separation down the road.” (emphasis added)
Consider yourself warned. (It’s not a large leap to apply this advice to estate planning as well.)
Quote for the Day
April 12, 2016 by Leave a Comment
One of 12 reasons Edwin P. Morrow III, J.D., LL.M. gives for keeping assets in a trust rather than distributing them outright to beneficiaries at death, from his outline, The Optimal Basis Increase and Income Tax Efficiency Trust:
A trust allows the grantor to make certain that the assets are managed and distributed according to his/her wishes, keeping funds “in the family bloodline”. Sure, spouses can agree not to disinherit the first decedent’s family, but it happens all the time – people move away, get sick and get remarried – the more time passes, the more the likelihood of a surviving spouse remarrying or changing his or her testamentary disposition.
Concealed Carry in Utah and Wyoming
April 11, 2016 by Leave a Comment
So I have a friend who lives in Utah and wants a concealed carry permit. Unfortunately, he still drives on a Wyoming drivers license and doesn’t want to give it up. And because of this, he thought he couldn’t get a concealed carry permit, which is a reasonable assumption if you look at the FAQs on Utah’s Department of Public Safety website, which details what documents must accompany an application for a concealed carry permit:
Given this state of affairs, my friend decided to try to get a permit in Wyoming, but there he ran into the residency requirement. Thus, unless he surrendered his Wyoming driver’ license or until he moved back to Wyoming, he couldn’t have a concealed carry permit. Or so he thought.
I was explaining this conundrum to my gun-wise son the other day, and he replied, “people from out of state get Utah permits all the time. It’s one of the most reciprocated CCPs in the country.”
At the time, I had only read Wyoming’s law, and I thought it was pretty clear that you needed to be a resident to get a permit there, and I assumed it was the same in Utah, but I decided to check the law in both states to see if I had missed something. Turns out I had.
Wyoming’s concealed carry law does require applicants to be a resident, but the law is not so clear as I had thought. It says, in the relevant part, that “The attorney general through the division shall issue a permit to any person who [among other things]:
Is a resident of the United States and has been a resident of Wyoming for not less than six (6) months prior to filing the application. The Wyoming residency requirements of this paragraph do not apply to any person who holds a valid permit authorizing him to carry a concealed firearm authorized and issued by a governmental agency or entity in another state that recognizes Wyoming permits and is a valid statewide permit; (WS §6-8-104 (b)(i)) (emphasis added)
To me, the bolded part appears to say that a non-resident with a valid permit issued in another state can apply for a Wyoming permit. Apparently, I’m wrong, at least according to the people at the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation. According to them, the bolded part means that if someone moves to Wyoming to become a resident and already has a valid permit from their former state, they don’t have to wait six months to apply for a Wyoming permit. Bottom line: you need to be a resident of Wyoming to get a Wyoming permit. My friend was out of luck.
But Utah proved to be a surprise. Though the Department of Public Safety’s website does in fact say applicants need to provide a photocopy of their driver’s license, that is incorrect. In fact, if you click the “download application” link at the bottom of the FAQ, you’ll discover that the actual application says you can provide either a copy of your driver’s license OR a copy of your state-issued ID with your application for a concealed carry permit:
For what it’s worth, I confirmed what I’ve written above with the relevant agencies in both Wyoming and Utah.
My friend was happy to hear the news.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, my son was correct. Utah will issue permits to out-of-state persons for an additional fee.