Latest / CattleUSA Daily / 133: A Simple Step to Protect Your Ranch's Future with Paige Harding

Transcript

133: A Simple Step to Protect Your Ranch's Future with Paige Harding · CattleUSA Daily

0:00
Welcome to another episode of the Cattle USA Daily Podcast.
0:03
Today we are welcoming back Paige Harding, not only a dear
0:07
friend of mine, but also just an amazing resource and attorney
0:13
from Southwest Kansas. Paige has come on to the podcast
0:17
a few Times Now and talked about a lot of different things.
0:20
One of her main things has been estate planning and what that is
0:24
and breaking it down. Today Paige is coming on and we
0:27
are breaking down the nitty gritty of some things that maybe
0:33
we don't always think about with estate planning and a practical
0:37
resource that every single person can take away from today
0:41
to start chipping away at the very daunting aspect of estate
0:44
planning and just making your life a little bit simpler and
0:48
making it really simple, especially for the people that
0:52
you are leaving behind and leaving your legacy to.
0:55
So without further ado, let's go ahead and hop into this podcast
0:57
with Paige. But before we do, if you could
0:59
take 5, 5 seconds to go like subscribe, rate, review, do all
1:03
of the things. We really appreciate it here at
1:05
the team. It takes half a second to go do
1:08
those things on whatever platform that you are on.
1:10
It just means the world to us to continue to keep you guys
1:14
engaged and updated and be able to bring you these podcasts
1:17
every single day. So take a couple seconds while
1:19
we do this intro to go ahead and do that down below.
1:23
And let's hop into this podcast with Paige.
1:29
Welcome to the Cattle USA Daily podcast, your go to source for
1:32
the latest livestock markets, industry insights and the update
1:36
shaping agriculture today. I'm your host, Lauren Moylan, a
1:39
passionate advocate for agriculture, here to keep you
1:42
informed and connected. Now let's dive into today's
1:45
episode. Paige, welcome back to the
1:51
podcast. We are so excited to welcome you
1:54
back on and to talk a little bit more about estate planning and
1:59
just everything that goes along with that and the logistics of
2:03
being a farmer and a rancher and what that looks like and what
2:07
leading our legacies and leaving them down for the next
2:09
generation looks like. Today, we are here to talk about
2:12
something extremely exciting and I'm so excited to have you on
2:15
and talk about it. You recently created the Estate
2:19
Planning Essential Information Guide.
2:21
Dive into that for me. What is it?
2:23
Share. Share all the things.
2:25
Yeah, so I recently created the Estate Planning Essential
2:29
Information Guide, and this is not a legal document at all.
2:34
This is really just a practical resource for you and your family
2:38
to use to keep track of all of your accounts, passwords, where
2:43
your documents are at, where your safes are at, if you have a
2:45
safety deposit box, just really key information like that that a
2:50
lot of times your estate plan doesn't really cover.
2:52
This will make your family's life just a little bit easier
2:55
after someone passes away and your family is experiencing the
2:59
grieving process. If you have this tool, this will
3:02
help to make the transition of some of those important accounts
3:05
a lot easier and more manageable for your family.
3:08
So why is this important to have even if someone already has an
3:12
estate plan? Because your will and your trust
3:16
can tell your family who who gets what, but it doesn't tell
3:19
them where to find it or how to access it.
3:22
So you can have the best legal documents in the world, but if
3:25
your spouse doesn't know the password to your bank account or
3:27
the name of your insurance company where the safe is, where
3:31
you have a safety deposit box located, they're still going to
3:34
hit roadblocks. And this guide will help to
3:36
close that gap. Lord knows that I need to be
3:39
like, I need you to e-mail me this real quick because I need
3:41
to be spending some time filling this out.
3:44
My husband does know that there's pretty much a universal
3:46
password that if you know that password, you can probably get
3:50
into my bank account or my Instagram account all at the
3:52
same time. But holy cow, I can just think
3:56
about right now how many things I have that have passwords to
4:00
them that I I need to write all of that down.
4:02
And it's tedious and it's annoying, but it is probably so
4:06
worth it because you never know what's going to happen.
4:08
And it's one of those situations that it's better to be prepared.
4:11
So can you give a quick overview of what what all is inside of
4:16
this guide and break all of that down for us?
4:18
Absolutely. So this first goes over personal
4:21
information, starting as simple as your full legal name and then
4:25
going into where are your important documents located?
4:29
Where's your estate plan even located at?
4:31
You cannot imagine how many times I have people walk into my
4:35
office and they have a loved one who has recently passed away and
4:38
they can't find the will or the trust.
4:40
They know that it exists, they know that it is somewhere, but
4:43
they can't find find it. So why get a will or a trust if
4:46
you're not going to know? And keep track of where those
4:49
important documents are. It also goes into things such as
4:53
organ donor status, the the combinations to the safe.
4:57
Then it goes into some key contacts.
4:59
So who's the attorney that your loved one used, the accountants,
5:02
the insurance agent, the doctor, the vet?
5:05
You know, those are some very important things for farmers and
5:07
ranchers. Who was the FSA agent that you
5:10
worked with a lot? Was there a financial agent that
5:13
you worked with often? Then we go into some property
5:16
information. Where are the deeds titles to
5:18
vehicles? This is another huge one.
5:20
And people walk into my office every single day and don't know
5:23
where the titles to vehicles or equipment are located.
5:26
So that's something that is a huge relief if people have
5:31
filled out this document, things such as utilities, who is your
5:37
electricity provider, propane, Internet, account numbers and
5:42
logins for all of these. All of this information can be
5:45
found if someone has filled out this sheet.
5:48
Then we go into the financial accounts, bank accounts, credit
5:51
cards, even Venmo and PayPal. Not something that you know as
5:54
estate planning involves. As we evolve as a society,
5:57
estate planning has to evolve with it.
5:59
So Venmo and PayPal, those didn't exist, you know, 30 years
6:02
ago, but they're very prevalent and used on a daily basis today.
6:06
Insurance policies, online accounts and subscriptions.
6:10
e-mail, that's a huge one. My e-mail is my life.
6:14
Everything is on, you know, my personal e-mail and my work
6:17
e-mail. And I know that many other
6:19
people are the in the exact same boat.
6:22
So what's your e-mail account and password so that people can
6:25
deactivate those accounts, streaming services, loyalty
6:29
programs, things like that. And then we even can go into
6:33
social media accounts and then things such as mortgages to
6:36
student loans. So it's basically an entire road
6:40
map of your life's practical details.
6:43
And I fill this out, I give it to all of my clients as a hard
6:46
copy sheet and they'll write it in with pencil and I'll say,
6:51
bring it back to me and let me type that up for you so we can
6:53
read your handwriting. That is so real because I think
6:56
if I handed that to my dad today, it would especially, you
6:59
know, once you get halfway through and you're like, I've
7:02
been sitting here for two hours filling this out.
7:05
It really turns into chicken scratch after that.
7:08
And you're like, is that an S or A5?
7:12
What, what is that supposed to be?
7:13
And then you're sitting there trying to figure it out.
7:16
And luckily, we live in a digital age where we have so
7:20
many blessings of being able to have access to all of these
7:23
things and having emails and centrally located items.
7:27
But at the same time, it's like I have a Google passwords
7:30
manager, but if you don't know the password to my e-mail
7:33
account, you can't get into my Google passwords manager.
7:35
And good luck getting in and being able to pay our electric
7:38
bill. If you can't figure out my
7:39
password type of thing like that.
7:41
You just, you don't think about until you actually sit down and
7:45
you're like, okay, sadly, if I left the face of the earth
7:49
tomorrow, my husband would not only be grieving, but he would
7:52
be scrambling trying to figure out how to pay our mortgage, how
7:55
to pay our electric bill, how to get into all of these different
7:58
accounts that I manage. And it's just the reality of the
8:02
situation and so important. But this guide did not just come
8:06
out of nowhere for you. It actually has a really
8:08
personal story. I would love it if you could
8:10
take a second to share that side of the story behind you creating
8:15
this guide. Yes, absolutely.
8:18
So the first time that this really hit me that something
8:21
like this was a necessity for my clients was a few months ago.
8:25
A family came in who had just lost their adult son.
8:28
And I'm still a new attorney. So each time I see one of these
8:32
instances, I think, oh, this is, you know, this is just a one off
8:35
situation that was a fluke deal. And I'm starting to realize that
8:38
almost everything is a fluke deal.
8:41
Everything's an interesting situation.
8:43
So like I said, this family just came in who had lost their adult
8:46
son, and he was about at the age where he had just transferred
8:50
everything over to his own name. He had his own cell phone bill,
8:54
had bought his own car and had a mortgage, and literally recently
8:59
had just switched most of these major life accounts over to
9:02
himself. Sadly he had passed away and he
9:05
didn't have an estate plan yet, which is pretty common at his
9:08
age. But the real problem was that no
9:10
one had access to all of this information because he had
9:14
literally just created it. So they couldn't access his
9:17
credit cards, they couldn't access his phone provider, even
9:21
his basic bills like his water bill, they had trouble getting
9:26
into that because everything was password protected.
9:30
You had to jump through a bunch of hoops.
9:32
But even if they had had the legal authority to do that, they
9:36
that would have helped. That would have helped a step in
9:38
this process. But they didn't have the exact
9:40
details that they needed to get access to all of these accounts.
9:44
And so it was heartbreaking to watch this family who had
9:46
suffered a serious tragedy. It's always horrible when a
9:50
child passes away before their parent, but they were also
9:54
having to to try to scramble and find out all of this information
9:58
so that they could pay the bills and turn off his phone, things
10:01
like that. That was the first time that
10:03
this hit me that something that a tool like this was needed.
10:06
So Fast forward to a couple of months, I was attending the K
10:10
State Research, Research and Extensions Leaving a Lasting
10:14
Legacy conference that was for Farm, Ranch and women.
10:18
And the very first speaker that was at that conference was a
10:22
young woman who had just lost her husband, and she was a
10:25
mother of three. So she was grieving.
10:27
Her husband, who had unfortunately passed in a tragic
10:31
death, was taking care of three little kids running the farm and
10:36
ranch operation and trying to find out how to access those
10:42
accounts to do so. So she spoke about how her
10:46
husband was the the financial guy in her family.
10:49
He paid all the bills, he did everything.
10:52
She ended up having to completely switch phone
10:54
companies because she did not know the information to get into
10:57
their cell phone provider. So she had to completely switch
11:00
phone companies and just everything she said felt like
11:04
brick wall after brick wall. They, she just kept on running
11:07
into roadblocks. So it was heartbreaking again to
11:11
hear this woman who had who was grieving her husband, raising 3
11:16
kids, running a farming and ranch operation and trying to
11:20
figure out how to access all of this financial information
11:23
because she had never been the person in her family to do that.
11:27
So that's when it hit me that, wow, this tool is very much
11:31
needed. This is something that I want to
11:33
give to my clients because I don't ever want a single one of
11:36
my clients walking in again and having to face that difficulty
11:40
as they're in the grieving process.
11:42
And I'm not going to lie, this estate planning downloadable
11:46
form is pretty in depth. You know, I would start and go
11:50
one section at a time, try to fill out one section per day
11:54
because it's a lot of information and it's going to be
11:57
annoying to track down. But I cut it down a lot.
12:01
I cut it down to the most bare bones as much as I thought that
12:04
it would be attainable for the average person.
12:07
And I give it out to all of my clients now because I think that
12:11
if you have this information in place and readily available when
12:17
an unforeseen tragedy strikes, you're prepared in that aspect
12:20
and you can focus on the grieving process or taking care
12:24
of your loved ones. So the basis of everything with
12:29
this was that like, this was born out of seeing other
12:32
people's struggles. Exactly.
12:34
I wanted to create something free, simple, and easy to fill
12:37
out that could prevent those kinds of challenges.
12:40
This is something that people can do at home without a lawyer.
12:43
Like I said, this is not a legal document.
12:45
This is just a practical tool to help you keep your affairs in
12:48
place. That makes total sense.
12:51
And I know like I'm immediately page like I need you to e-mail
12:54
me this actually like right after we get off of this.
12:57
Can you dive in a little bit deeper on the specifics of
13:01
what's in the guide and how exactly it works so that we can
13:04
get just like a little bit of a bigger idea of like what is
13:07
actually in there? Let me actually take a look at
13:09
this. So we go through personal
13:12
information, key contacts, property information, utilities
13:17
and household services. Those include the phone lines
13:21
and that's been the biggest issue that I've seen his phone
13:23
providers over the years. Financial accounts and
13:28
insurance. Another thing that we go
13:30
through, like I said, the biggest issues that I see people
13:32
facing are sometimes you know, farmers and ranchers have so
13:37
much property that they forget how much property that they have
13:41
and it will be titled in different LLC's, trusts or in
13:45
people's names personally. So that is a place I only have
13:49
two blanks for the property description and I know my
13:51
farmers and ranchers need more than that, but that's a big
13:54
thing to hit on the location of spare keys.
13:58
That is another huge 1. I had a client the other day who
14:03
there are four siblings, mom and dad passed away and they were
14:08
looking to get all of the keys to each piece of farm equipment
14:14
that they have. And in the pantry was a huge
14:17
basket, literally just full of keys.
14:20
So the family was having to go through.
14:23
They said it took them an entire weekend to go through and grab
14:26
each key and try to put it in each piece of equipment because
14:30
there were just so many. So that is something another
14:33
thing people don't think of. And then the last thing that I
14:36
want to hit on is vehicle titles, where those are located.
14:39
That is a huge one. I have people all the time who
14:43
come in and cannot find the titles to vehicles.
14:45
So then it makes it much, much harder to get those transferred
14:49
because we'll have to do a quiet title action first.
14:51
So if you just know where those types of things are, that will
14:55
save your family a lot of headaches down the road.
14:58
And I think like the biggest thing with this is the fact that
15:00
you're saving the headaches down the road.
15:02
You're trying to make this as simple and easy as possible.
15:05
And that's why we have estate plans in general is so that our
15:09
family members can go through a grieving process without having
15:12
to stress about all of the million other things that go
15:16
along with death and with loss and everything that goes along
15:21
with that. That's not fun to talk about or
15:23
not fun to go through. And it's not going to be fun to
15:26
sit down and write down all of your passwords.
15:28
But like, if I think about it, holy cow, I have hundreds,
15:32
hundreds of accounts that if I were to pass away, my husband
15:36
needs access to everything like from as many school as social
15:40
media to as important as our mortgage and like titles of our
15:43
vehicles and everything like that, that he has an idea of
15:46
where they're at. But at the same time, having it
15:48
written down and then probably uploaded to a drop box put in
15:52
our safe like everywhere else is probably so important.
15:54
But this doesn't replace the legal documents that we need.
15:58
We still, we still need an estate plan.
16:00
We still need a will. Can you can you break that down?
16:03
Yep. So like I said, this is not a
16:05
legal document, just a practical tool.
16:07
You still need the state plan in place to, you know, discuss
16:13
everything from distribution to saving you in case of potential
16:18
disability. So both of these things go hand
16:21
in hand. You need the practical tool
16:23
which is downloadable, the link will be in the show notes and or
16:28
you could go to our website to find that or and you also need
16:32
the estate planning documents themselves because those things
16:35
will help you in case of potential disability and then
16:39
you know direct the distribution of your assets.
16:42
I get so excited because every time I am doing a complicated
16:47
probate case or some, some sort of wonky situation, I always
16:52
hear the younger generation who is having to handle that.
16:56
They say, I'm, I'm going to do this, you know, so much better
17:00
so that my kids don't have to deal with this someday.
17:02
And this is the very first document I hand them.
17:04
I say go home and fill this out if you want to make your time
17:07
coming easier on your family members.
17:09
Yeah, 100%. So it can be overwhelming
17:12
though, like we, if you sit down and actually think about it,
17:15
hundreds, hundreds of accounts, hundreds of passwords, tons of
17:19
things that you don't even think about.
17:20
Like you talked about titles and where you keep the spare keys.
17:25
Gosh, I wouldn't even thought about that because like my
17:28
husband knows where I keep the spare keys, but my parents don't
17:31
know where I keep the spare keys.
17:32
Like God forbid my husband and I get in an accident and we both
17:36
pass away. Like my, my family has no idea
17:40
where any of that stuff is, no matter how well they know me.
17:43
Like they'd be searching through drawers and cabinets and
17:46
everything else in between for ages to try and find that, so it
17:51
can be extremely overwhelming. How should someone approach
17:54
filling this out to try and mitigate some of that?
17:57
Yeah, I would say with start with what you know right off the
18:00
top of your head. You do not have to do this all
18:03
in one sitting. Make it like a weekly project.
18:06
There are little sections in here, so break it down section
18:09
by section. Maybe fill out one a day and I
18:12
know that some of these things will change.
18:15
You know the password to your Netflix.
18:17
You know, I forget my Netflix password almost every single
18:20
time I have I log in and I have to click forgot password and go
18:23
through the whole rigmarole there.
18:25
But some of these things will stay the same, like the location
18:29
of your safe. You're probably not going to
18:30
move that around too often. So start with what you know and
18:34
then take it, break it down section by section one day at a
18:37
time and involve your spouse or a trusted family member.
18:40
They may know the details like you don't and like the alarm
18:43
code or streaming services like I just talked about Netflix.
18:47
And I know that in many family relationships, you know,
18:51
there's, there might be 1 spouse who does the financial stuff,
18:55
one spouse who pays the bills. So make sure that you're really
18:58
communicating that with your spouse and with your partner so
19:02
that if something were to happen, they would at least know
19:05
where to start. And sitting down and filling out
19:08
this guide with your spouse would be or with a parent would
19:12
be a really great place to start there.
19:15
And then once someone gets it all filled out, where should it
19:18
be stored? What are your thoughts on that?
19:20
I recommend making copies. So make a couple copies, make
19:24
sure each spouse has one, and have one that's easily
19:27
accessible. You know, if you have an office,
19:29
keep it in the top dress desk drawer of your office.
19:33
If you have a pantry where you stick some documents, we still
19:38
have a spot in our pantry where there's a phone book who, who
19:41
even uses those anymore? But that's, that sucker's not
19:43
moving. That sucker's not going
19:45
anywhere. I would stick that in our pantry
19:48
right next to our old phone books, cookbooks.
19:50
And then keep one in a protected location, like in your safe.
19:55
And so that if you lose 1, you can find the other, you know
19:58
where the other one is. So make a copy and keep one in
20:02
an easily accessible location and maybe one in a little bit of
20:05
a safer location. And then I know from my
20:08
standpoint of like, I want all of my families in our shared
20:12
Dropbox. Like my family has a Dropbox
20:15
that we all have access to so we can send documents back and
20:18
forth. Like if you can put it in an
20:20
online location to like send honestly put it in an online
20:24
location and then send a link to all of your family members, all
20:27
of your kids, all of your parents.
20:29
And then like title it information for like XYZ person,
20:35
important estate planning. That way, like if something
20:38
happens, they can go back in their e-mail and search it from
20:41
six years ago and it's still in their e-mail.
20:43
They've got the link, they've got all of that stuff.
20:45
And it's just like, like you said, put it in a bunch of
20:48
locations. That way there's no question of
20:52
having to search for it. And you don't have someone
20:54
coming in and saying, we filled this out, we took 10 hours to do
20:58
it, but we don't know where grandpa put it.
21:01
And then you're in the exact same situation that you were
21:03
when you started this whole process and you put in the 10
21:06
hours to fill it out. Can you dive into like, what
21:10
happens if you don't do this? What happens if?
21:13
Like what's the risk of not completing this, not having this
21:16
information accessible? Like I said through those two
21:22
family examples that I gave, it could take months to get all of
21:26
this figured out. Wrapping up someone's estate is
21:29
unfortunately a very long process and this could just
21:34
'cause you not having this information could just cause you
21:36
to hit more road blocks and prolong that that time.
21:42
So if you have all of this taken care of, hopefully your family
21:46
member when the time comes, can just find this document and know
21:50
exactly where safe is, exactly what the combination is, and
21:54
find a stack of all of the information that they need to
21:57
wrap up your estate right there. This is really just the best
22:01
tool, I think, to help people to keep their affairs in order.
22:06
And I really think that after you fill this out, you'll find
22:09
that you feel a lot more organized in your own personal
22:12
life. You'll feel like you have
22:14
everything more together because you have all of your information
22:18
in one spot. So highly recommend taking the
22:22
time make it a family project this fall and just get her done
22:26
he. Has 100%.
22:27
So if someone's ready to get her done and make it a family
22:30
project, what are their next steps?
22:32
Where should they be looking? Where can they find all of this
22:34
information? Yes, So you can go to the link
22:37
in the show notes, Scroll down to the bottom of the link, that
22:41
page that pops up and put in a couple pieces of information and
22:46
the form will be automatically emailed to you.
22:49
So you can download that. That way you'll have a digital
22:52
copy and you can print it off in order to have a physical copy as
22:56
well. Or you can go to kenburke.com,
23:00
look up Trust in Estates and that web page will be there as
23:04
well. Perfect page.
23:05
Well, thank you so much for taking some time to break this
23:08
down and talk about something that probably gets overlooked
23:13
more than it actually gets talked about, especially when it
23:15
comes to estate planning, especially when it comes to just
23:17
living lives as adults. Something that I know I am
23:21
adding to my To Do List for my husband and I in the next couple
23:23
months to start breaking this down.
23:26
And it's a daunting thing. It's something we don't want to
23:29
do, but something that I know everyone needs to do.
23:32
I don't care who you are, what you do, where you're at in life.
23:36
Like if you're anywhere from a college student to someone
23:39
that's been around the block a time or two, you've got
23:41
passwords that your family doesn't know.
23:43
And so it's really important that we get all of those written
23:45
down. Thank you for the time that you
23:47
took to put this together and the free resource that you're
23:49
giving to people. I appreciate it.
23:51
I know everyone else does as well.
23:53
So to all of our listeners out there, make sure you check out
23:55
those show notes down below. We're going to have that link so
23:58
that you can go and find that free link for you guys and get
24:01
started on this and get your affairs in order and just make
24:05
it a family project like Paige said.
24:07
Paige, thank you for your time. And to all of you listeners out
24:10
there, we will see you all on another episode of the Cattle
24:12
USA Daily Podcast next time. Have a good one y'all.