Latest / The Jon Sanchez Show / Is Your Estate Plan Helping Or Hurting Your Family?
Transcript
- Jon G. Sanchez: Good Wednesday afternoon to you. Welcome to the John Sanchez show on News Talk780KOH. It's a pleasure to be with you. As you just heard Kristen and Jack say, happy hump day. We're halfway there. ⁓ quick reminder: market is closed on Friday. Again, getting letting everybody get a little early start for the Fourth of July weekend. All let's get down to it, shall we? First of all, I want to remind everybody. I've got a great webinar, educational webinar, workshop, I like to call it. Not what even webinar. I like the word workshop lined up for you this evening. Six o'clock. I still have a few spots remaining. me an email, John J O N at specializetrust.com, and I'll send you the invite right after the show. What's it about? Do you have an estate planning problem? That is gonna be the topic. And let me tell you, ⁓ it gonna be an eye-opening experience for you. And I designed this workshop for those of you that do not have any estate plan, no trust, no will, no powers of attorney, no nothing. And I've also designed it for those of you that do have an estate plan. And you think everything's okay. Let's make sure. Because the first thing we're going to do is we're going to go through an estate planning self-assessment. You're going to be able to answer based upon the questions we're going to go over at the beginning of the webinar. your estate plan's in good shape or not. It's an estate planning self-assessment. Then going to move into the seven biggest mistakes that families make. We're going to talk about probate reality, ⁓ how tell if your trust is outdated. And it's not just by the date, trust me. we'll talk a little bit about beneficiaries and wrap things up with the documents every family should have. But really my favorite portion is the QA portion of it, where you get a chance to me any questions that you may have in regards to your estate plan or no estate plan whatsoever. Again, at six PM this evening. Send me an email, John at specialized trust.com, J-O-N. And ⁓ I said, got ⁓ I think 10 spots remaining and ⁓ we'll you lined up and get you in there. Well, it is Wednesday, of estate planning. So I always promise you estate planning topic on Wednesday after I do my stock market recap. You know, I want to start just kind of tell you a little stat. And I I think I've shared this before, but I want to share it again. there's a number of organizations that validate this this this stat. If you ever need it, just let me know. But I didn't I didn't cite it ⁓ because again, there's so many c organizations that verify this. What I'm talking about is did you know that more than half of American adults still do not have estate plan? And when you look at surveys and and the data, They consider an estate plan just having a will, which is, in my opinion, not an estate plan, right? It's just icing on the kid, or it's just a a minute first step. But yeah, over half of America does not have an estate plan. And of those that do have it may be making some very, very costly mistakes they don't even realize. So today, I'm gonna do on the program, gonna be a little primer to tonight's webinar. I'm gonna discuss of the most common estate planning mistakes that I see. That I see. And I'm talking from things from Outdated trusts, documents, beneficiary errors, and the wrong trustee. my goodness, I could do an entire show on how to choose a trustee. And then again, we'll talk a little bit more about the webinar as they as the day goes on. So today you're gonna a great lesson both during the show and of course if you join me on the webinar this evening at 6 p.m. All right. You can be an estate expert when I'm done with you. I promise you that. All right. With that said, let's get down to another area that you are an expert in, or at least I'm trying every each and every day to make you an expert in, and that is the stock market side of things today. You know, there's a couple of different ways that the market could have gone today. could have gone to the, ⁓ I mentioned this on one of the updates this morning. When you wrap up a strong quarter, and I went through all the quarterly numbers yesterday, when you get wrap up a strong quarter that was really driven by, obviously, technology. Various aspects of it, the memory stocks, the semiconductors, so on and so forth. When you go into a new quarter, the institutions can do one of two things. You've heard me use that term window dressing before, which is a term we use on Wall Street that basically talks about reallocation, right? If you are an institutional manager ⁓ your mandate, your investment policy statement says you need to keep a 60-40 balance, right? 60% equities, 40% ⁓ income. ⁓ that's your mandate and get to the end of the end of the quarter and you're like, ⁓ man, you know, we've had a great great quarter in technology, therefore on the equity side. So that 60% that I started the quarter with is now 70%. And my 40% exposure, or excuse me, ⁓ fixed income exposure is 30%. Uh-oh, I'm out of mandate. I can't do that. So that's the what we call the window dressing. That's where they begin to rebalance the portfolio to get it back to the mandate of 6040. So ⁓ My point of bringing this up to you is when you have a strong quarter like we we did and a strong start to the first half of the year, times these institutions, again, the ones that move the market will say, Look at we had one heck of a run as an example in technology in the first half of this year and for the quarter. So therefore, I don't I'm gonna lessen my exposure to technology, right? They can't do away with all of it, but I'm gonna lessen my exposure. Maybe coming into ⁓ you know, into the ⁓ the second quarter, maybe they had, I don't know, I'll pick a number, 20% technology exposure. And then that rose to say 40% because of the gains. And they may go, okay, you know, I'm gonna pull it back to my 20%, or you know what? I'm comfortable because look at the run that the technology has had in 2026. I'm gonna go not 20%, maybe I'm gonna drop down to 10%. So they what we call sector rotation, where they start to move money out of the winners ⁓ and they to find the areas that have underperformed the market. Although there's not a lot of areas on to be honest with you that have underperformed the market. So it's kind of hard to find that. But that is the risk that you have coming into a new quarter. So that was one of my concerns. luckily it didn't quite happen. Now, some of you may argue with me and go, well, wait a minute, John, we lost 174 points on the Nasdaq today. What do you mean there wasn't rotation? Now that wasn't rotation. That was just we had a couple areas that were weak ⁓ within again back to the semis and memory stocks and and ⁓ memory storage in a few areas, but nothing significant by any means. what does this tell me? Why am I going through all this with you and telling you this? This tells me that think we're going to be in for a very strong second half of 2026. This tells that the institutions are not rotating out of tech, that they are still continuing to own. And, you know, they did do a little bit of rebalancing and brought that equity exposure down back to their mandate, but overall, They're not bailing on tech. They're not bailing on some of the areas that again have been very, very strong. that is a extremely important point I wanna, I wanna, I wanna hit home with with you is you think, you know, tech because tech had a great run for the first half of the year ⁓ that, know, it's over with, don't think that. There's no signs of that happening. Not saying it couldn't change, you know, ⁓ for the the the remaining ⁓ part of ⁓ of twenty twenty six. Don't think that's gonna happen. But it can for various reasons, but there's no signs of it at this point. Now, what pressured the NASDAQ today for that 173 points, 174 point loss? it was corning. that was one of the big drivers, down 13.6%, $34.74 loss to $220.70. Again, more driven by profit taking than anything else. KLA 10 core was another one down 11.77%, down $35.52 to $266.19. ⁓ both of those posted solid gains in the first half of the year. ⁓ again, a little bit of ⁓ profit taking today. And I mean ⁓ they actually came in ⁓ some of the ⁓ weakest performers of the S P 500. But the flip side of that, how about Apple? $5 and two cent rise, 1.73%, 294.38. Stocks been suffering these last few days. Now it's coming back. See what I'm saying? ⁓ They're the names that were you know maybe that that didn't perform well in the last week or so, and they're them back to the portfolio. Microsoft, exact same ⁓ situation as Apple. Stock rose eleven dollars and twenty six cents, three point zero two percent to three hundred eighty four twenty eight. Palantir Technology also outperformed. They outperformed after President Trump's latest financial disclosure showed that he purchased between one thousand and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of the company's shares. Hmm, go figure that one. Stock rose nine dollars and six cents on the news, seven and three quarters percent to one hundred twenty five seventy-three. Did you by chance I maybe Tomorrow as I wrap up the week, maybe me and the boys will discuss this. I don't know if any of you saw the the president's financial disclosure. amount of money that man made in 'cause this was twenty twenty five's amount of money that man made in cryptocurrencies and selling ⁓ c or selling ⁓ coins and so on and so forth. It's just yeah, literally over five hundred million dollars. Plus there was profits in his properties and yeah, he ⁓ he's had a heck of a run. He's had a heck of a run personally. That's for sure. right. Now let's move on to other movers today. Let's start with Amazon. A little quiet here, but it was up $3.36, 1.41%, now to a price of $2.41.70. Tesla, another strong day up to $4.78 to $4.25.38. Nike earnings this actually after after the close yesterday. ⁓ It's a component. Small stock, though, doesn't really influence the calculation, but it had a good day up 4.9%, $2.00 to $43.06. let's see. What other areas? ⁓ General Mills had a good earnings report up eight and a half percent. Walmart down almost four percent. Constellation brands down about one and a half after earnings report. And ⁓ Caterpillar, this was this was one of the drags on the Dow. I mean, we we lost 13 points, big deal on the Dow. But cat ⁓ was a big drag on it, ⁓ lost seventy-three dollars and forty-nine cents, six point nine percent after it pulled back from record highs, finished the day at nine hundred and ninety-one dollars and forty-one cents. All right, when I come back, I'll hit the commodities, the interest rate side, and then we're gonna get ready for our topic. Is your estate plan helping or hurting your family? Welcome back to the John Sanchez show on News Talk 780 KOH. All we're getting ready for our Is Your Estate Plan Helping or Hurting Your Family topic here in just a few moments. But first, let's give you the recap one more time on the market. 14 on the Dow. Yeehaw, 14, ⁓ 52,305 was our close. NASDAQ at 174 pullback, 0.66%. Finish the day at 26,040. And SP lower by 0.22% or 16 points, closed at 7,483. Oil prices, can you believe this? We broke $69 a barrel. $68.69 is where we finished, down 83 cents for the day. rose $41.80 to $4,081 and 80 cents an ounce. And six basis point increase on the 10-year treasury. That was one of the negatives today. Bond yields did edge up. Our yield close there, 4.48%. All right, get down to tonight's topic. You know, folks, during my 35 years being in this business, I'll tell you something. Something that I've learned, something that is very important to me. Estate planning is not about just the documents, as everybody makes it out to be. Estate planning, in my opinion, is about people. It's about family. It's about loved ones. It's about protecting your spouse. about protecting your children, your grandchildren, and making one of life's most difficult moments, i.e. just a little bit easier for the people that you love. But unfortunately, I have seen way too many families make the same mistakes over and over and over again. today I'm going to discuss 12 of the most common estate planning mistakes that I have seen over my career and how many of you can learn from this and hopefully avoid them. So get started on mistake number one. ⁓ my goodness. I wish I had a dollar, literally, for every time I've heard this from a client. And I've called mistake number one the procrastination mistake. Talk to them about the importance of estate planning. This is even before I started a specialized trust. I'll do it next year. I'm too young. I don't have enough assets. Estate planning is just for the wealthy. I need to think about it. Right? How many times, be honest with yourself? How many times have you said this, whether verbally or just to yourself? Yeah, I need to think about this. Yeah, my estate's not big enough at this point. I don't need to worry about it. ⁓ I'm too young. Estate plan is for the old fogies, right? The ones that got millions and millions of dollars. And again, I'll do it next year, next month, next week. I've heard that over and over and over again. Well, unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. Things happen. Things happen with out of our or things happen out of our control. And if you're not prepared, again, are you really going to be able to take care of your family the way that you want it? And the answer is probably no. So think about this question. What happens if tomorrow never comes? Could your family legally access your finances today? your family legally make medical decisions on your behalf today? Does your family know where you want the assets to go to today? Think about this for a second, whether it's right now or when you have some quiet time, I want to do some some for me. I want you to close your eyes and think if I don't walk through that front door today when I get home from work, or when I get back from the gym, or I don't come home today, will my family know what to do? If the answer is no, well. First of all, attend my webinar this evening. But secondly, get a hold of me and let's talk about an estate plan. Because that's literally what happens, what you have to think about. What happens if I don't come through that front door today? And I'm not picking on men, I'm talking about women because can't have a family without a without a couple, right? In many cases. So both are very, very important. All right, so procrastination mistake, number one. Mistake number two, doing it yourself. the stories I could give you on this You know, you can literally go online and I won't name the companies, but you can go get it, you can go create a living trust for 150, 200 bucks. It's a one size fits all document. Usually it's not state specific, so that invalidates it completely. It misses many provisions, so important provisions. It doesn't address family complexity. So the question I have for you is when does a simple estate become a complicated one? Well again, estate planning is not about filling out the blanks. It's about anticipating problems before they happen. as I always joke with DIYers, you never know how good your estate plan is until you're gone. When up there in heaven and you're looking down, do you want a smile on your face that ⁓ everything transitioning the way that you want for your loved ones? Or are gonna have a frown upon your face? say, ⁓ my God, I didn't want to go spend a few thousand bucks and get it done professionally. I did a DYI for a hundred and fifty bucks, and now look at the mess that I have created for my family. Mistake number three. This is a big one. Not talking to your family. You know, if you've gone to my website, specializedrust.com and you click on our eight packages, single one of our packages, even our young adult package for $425, ⁓ ⁓ the will, the the medical directive, the HIPAA, ⁓ powers of attorney, the things again, that as an 18-year-old or above, mom and dad can't make those decisions. So that's why I created this young adult package. But even in that package, We have in there that we will, for that person, have a family meeting. And of course, all of our other seven packages, that's included. It's no additional charge. And that is a meeting that I hold on Saturdays with the client and their family to explain to them. We have a great, we create a great estate report after we create the entire estate plan. a visual form, it's written in English, it's easy to understand. There's no guesswork who gets what and triggering events, et cetera. It's called an estate report. I share that with the family members. Why is that so important? Because the worst thing you can do is to spend the time, the money, the energy, everything. And you get your estate plan and you're so excited. As one of my clients did a few weeks ago, she clapped, literally started clapping when we were done. She was so excited, so relieved. But the mistake a lot of people make is they grab that paperwork, that that estate plan, they go shove it in the drawer, tuck it in the notebook, becomes a bookmarker. Your family has no idea. And again, that's what happened to me. I'm telling you, this is again as I've shared my story about my father, and which prompted me a year ago to create this estate planning business for my clients and for you, my audience, and my friends, and my family. I didn't know. of all people, right? And I had a phenomenal relationship with my father. Phenomenal. We talked about everything. But somehow, some way, he failed to mention that he had an he had a living trust. Otherwise. Guess what? I would have long made sure years ago when he had it created that it was properly written and funded. But he didn't. I didn't find out until he was on his deathbed. And again, as we said today, that $80,000 that was supposed to go to my kids and my brother and my sister's kids and the and the grand great-grandkids, still sitting with my ex-mother. Stepmom. Haven't seen a dime of it. So not talking to your family is almost as bad as not doing anything at all. Because guess what? When you pass, your family's gonna be confused. Like me, they're gonna be hurt that they didn't you didn't share anything with them. And you want to really complicate the matters further? Have a blended family, right? Your kids, her kids, vice versa. Then it really becomes a boiling pot. If you don't share the estate plan with your family, guess what? No one knows who's responsible. I have it all the time where people will go, ⁓ yeah, I named you know, my best friend Joe as my successor trustee. I said, Did you tell Joe that he's a successor Nah, Joe, he'll be fine handling it. Well, again, I'm gonna be doing some shows in the future, maybe even some workshops. Talking about how you choose a successor trustee, because it is a very, very high responsible job. It really is. It's very important. You are held to, just like I am in the investment world, you are held to federal fiduciary standards. You just don't pick anybody off the street. You don't pick somebody because they're your best friend to be your trustee. First, you got to pick somebody that has good business acumen, because they're going to talk to people like myself. They're going to talk to accountants. They're going to talk to a lot of business professionals. And if they have no clue about business, they're gonna be completely lost and it'll s really slow down the whole process, make it frustrating for them and for everybody. They gotta be honest, ethical, hard working. Do they have the time to do it? I've shared the stories and I won't bore you with them again. I've had clients literally have to quit their jobs to take care of mom and dad's estate because things weren't done right. So again, big mistake choosing the wrong ⁓ trustee. And same thing on the healthcare wishes. ⁓ yeah, I know dad doesn't want to be on life support. Well Did dad put it in writing? If not, they're going to try to keep dad on on on life support, right? So the healthcare wishes. And that's why you have a a medical directive as part of the estate plan. So as I go to break, just ask yourself this question. Would your family know what you wanted? If the answer is no, well, again, communication today could absolutely prevent conflict tomorrow. Welcome back to the John Sanchez show on News Talk 780 KOH. Pleasure to be with you this hump day. And ⁓ again, holiday short and week. Tomorrow's last trading day of the week. All right, looking forward to three-day weekend. right, once again, here's how we ⁓ finished up on the day. Again, a fairly lack lister start to the new quarter, second half of the year, finished down 14 on the down. The Nasdaq gave up a 174 ⁓ uh.66%, and the SP down 16. All right, that's all behind us. Now we're focusing on our topic. Once again, Is your estate plan helping or hurting your family? before, let me give you another reminder. I keep getting a bunch of emails. again, this evening, ⁓ 6 I want you to join me. This is purely educational. You know my style. I do not do anything but when it comes to my webinars, by all means. this evening, I I titled it, Do You Have an Estate Planning Problem? It's gonna be at 6 p.m. this evening. again, free educational webinar. Gonna be ⁓ discussing the seven common estate planning mistakes families make. I'm just giving you a little Cursor of those this evening on the show or this afternoon on the show. We'll talk about outdated trusts, beneficiary designation errors, funding mistakes, issues that could create unnecessary stress, delays, and expenses for your loved ones. Again, I designed this for those of you that have existing trust or those of you that don't. and thing I'm looking forward to is the beginning of the webinar where we're gonna go through an estate planning self-assessment to see if you even need an estate plan. Some of you not, and I hope that's the case. ⁓ But if if you do, once again, you're gonna be taken care of and you're gonna walk away and have all kinds of great details about it and ⁓ decide you need to do. That's simple. Send me email, John J O N at specialized trust dot com, and I'll send you the invite right after the show today. Again, that'll be six PM this evening. All right, let's back to today's topic. Once again, your estate plan helping or hurting your family? So let me give you brief recap. ⁓ I've laid out twelve mistakes that I've personally dealt with ⁓ with clients over the years, and some of them Myself personally. once again, the first mistake is procrastinating. I'll do it next year. I'm too young. I don't have enough assets. I don't know, you know, it's for the wealthy, all those things I went through. Or most importantly, I just need to think about it. Well, yeah, stories I could give you people that said, I just need to think about it. Like that one client of mine I told you about that they to think about it. And next thing you he's in the hospital with a brain aneurysm and he's dead two days later. Mistake number two doing it yourself. Yeah. Well, is your estate worth, you know, probably hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars? Worth investing into a proper professionally written estate plan? Well, that's your choice, but I'd think twice about it. Mistake three is where I left off, not talking to your family. Spend all the time, money, energy creating your estate plan, and you never share it with your kids. And don't me this excuse, folks. I know the reason I hear it from all of you. I don't want my kids to know what I have. Really? Why? For example, when we do the the the family meetings I told you about, which is part of our estate planning package. We don't get into numbers. We just say, here's what mom and dad have. Here's who's getting what. Here's the triggering events. So on so forth. You can let your kids know about your estate plan without getting into the numbers. I understand privacy for some of you, but once again, you ⁓ need to let them know ⁓ ⁓ been through this with clients before. I'm gonna give you one very quick story, very, very quick story. I was very young in my career, I was, I think, two or three years into my career, and when was with Sherson Lehman Brothers and One my largest and oldest clients, Walter and Elvira. I can't remember, I can't believe I remember their name. handled everything. Walter at that point was, you know, this is what, 94, 95, I guess it was. Walter was ⁓ about ⁓ late 80s, if I remember correctly. Walter all the family finances, very typical for that generation. Walter dies. never had, mean, we couldn't even get her to an account review meeting, so she had no clue what was going on. They had a daughter lived down in Los Angeles. We were in Bakersville, she lived down in Los Angeles. And her daughter, you know, luckily would sit in on some of the account reviews periodically. So dad dies, daughter comes up, daughter calls me on the first call on a Sunday afternoon. It's always on the weekends, says, you know, dad died. Where is everything? I'll never forget that. She said, Where is everything? I Well, what are you talking about? What do you mean, where is everything? I know what we have, but he's got a lot of investments. He had investments with other advisors, life insurance policy, all kinds of different things. This woman, literally, again. Like I said at the beginning of show, gave up her career, moved to Bakersfield from Los Angeles, and spent the next, I think it was about nine months. It wasn't a full year, spent the next nine months combing through every file cabinet. Because he was a pack rat. He had files ⁓ in their apartment, everywhere. cabinets up in shoeboxes. It's every disaster that you can imagine. And, you I was young, I had time on my hands, and I literally would go over there a couple times a week and help her comb through everything. Because not only did she have to find it, then she had to kind of put the pieces together. All because he did not have an estate plan. So don't surprise your family, really. she had no idea what he had, and that's why she called me on a Sunday. What does dad have? No idea at that point. All right, let's go to number four. Similar to to Walter and Elvira, hiding the documents, right? He he hid documents from her. I'll tell you that. He he was very adamant. Like she does not need to know what we have. Well, that's a mistake also. That's why I call it hiding the documents mistake number four. put your important documents in things like safety deposit boxes for those of you that still have them. Home safes. but does anybody have the combination besides you? Nobody knows where anything is. Passwords, contact information. Have you laid all that out? That should be part of an estate plan. If you haven't, guess what? Again, you don't want your family as they're grieving to spend hours, days, weeks, months, sometimes years putting pieces together. the last thing you want to do. You want to focus on the grieving process ⁓ the happy memories, not literally out your, you know, mother, father, whatever, because you son of a gun, I can't believe you didn't tell me what we had, where it is, how to get into it. I've seen it all. So again, answer ask yourself this question today. If something happened tonight, who knows where my estate plan is? Mistake number five, missing essential documents. You know, we have a base foundation package when we talk about estate planning. We have a revocable living trust, we have a poor over will, we have durable financial powers of attorney, we have advanced health care directives, we have HIPAA authorizations, and we have beneficiary designations. That's kind of just the core. then depending upon our person's wealth, we get into a lot of other things like slats and grats and irrevocables and all these other different things. But that is your base core estate plan. Trust, will, durable financial power of attorney, healthcare directive, advanced, of course. HIPAA and beneficiary designation. If you don't have those, or do you only have a couple of them? A lot of you just have a will and maybe you signed a power of attorney. Are those valid? Are they applicable? Maybe, maybe not. Mistake number six. forgetting digital assets. I see this one all the time. You see, trust documents have the ⁓ provision in there that you're giving authorization to whomever you designate ⁓ to have to your social media accounts and your emails. All these different things. Companies like Facebook and TikTok, all these they have very stringent rules and very specific time periods of when that power of attorney designated agent can have access and shut down those accounts and get all those photos that have been accumulating for the last twenty years. So don't forget about the digital assets. Everybody does. Your email account, your online banking and passwords, your social media, your digital photos, cryptocurrency. This is a huge one. Cloud storage, password managers. Again, ask yourself now. Could anyone access my digital life? number seven, not planning for final arrangements. I'll come back and wrap up with that through point twelve. Speaking wrapping up, let's do it with the wonderful Kristen Snow. She's in the right now traffic center. Hello, Kristen. Back to the John Sanchez Show on News Talk 780K WH. All right, we're gonna continue on our discussion again. Is your estate plan helping or hurting your family? Here we go. Let's wrap things up. But first, one more reminder: this evening, 6 p.m. Join me. My webinar, my workshop, cannot wait. again, it's gonna be a phenomenal night. Do you have an estate planning problem? So many things we're gonna go through. Just send me an email, John J O N at specializedrust.com. Get you on the list. And I think we got like three spots remaining now. and we're gonna make this happen. To spend some great time together, have an excellent QA, et cetera. right, back to the topic. Is your estate plan helping? Ignoring taxes. Mistake number eight. There's kinds of taxes, folks, as we all know it when death occurs. There could be capital gains tax, there's retirement account income taxes, there's overall income taxes, there's estate taxes, there's Roth conversion taxes, there's beneficiary planning. On and on and on. One that I see ⁓ quite frequently with people is. They fail to notify Social Security. Now, typically a funeral home is going to notify Social Security of the passing of the person, but I've had it where that hasn't happened. And heir continues, the widow, et cetera, continues to receive the decedent's Social Security benefit. I had one that they did it for ⁓ about two years. Well, there's no hiding anything from the government. The government came calling and they had write a check for a big, big sum of money plus penalties, et cetera. So ignoring taxes and things like that, major concern. So once again, ask yourself this are you passing assets or are you passing tax problems to your heirs? Mistake number nine, failing to update your plan. Life changes. Your plan needs a change. As I always say, and I'll say it one more time you're living, your estate plan, your living trust, et cetera. It is a living, breathing document in my mind. Life changes. You have marriage, you have divorce. Births, death, grandchildren, new home, business ownership, moving to another state, a big one. Has your estate plan changed with you? I'm finding the answer is no. So ask yourself when was the last time you reviewed your estate plan? Mistake number 10, choosing the wrong trustee. Like I said, I'm gonna do a show just on this in sometime in the future. Who serve as your trustee? Again, don't make it just a friend, family member just because you're trying to be a nice person. I've seen people try to name a child. They cannot be your trustee. I've seen people try to name multiple children. That's a whole nother subject, usually not advised. Is it a sibling? Is it a trusted friend? Is it a professional trustee? I had a great call last Friday with one of our local trust companies. that's who I'm personally gonna use and in in in my estate plan. so I have down because I don't want my family, my kids and so on and so forth fighting over anything. So there is a place to use a professional trustee. You need to think about what qualities do you want this person to have? What kind of integrity? What kind of organizational skills? ⁓ I can't stress that one enough. seen people be trustees that ⁓ not the most organized people, and it just creates an absolute, you know, mess for everybody. How available are they? Right? Are they in another part of the country where they can only fly out once a month? Can they handle everything remotely? What I'm finding is usually that person needs to be someone that is local to you. Because there's a lot of things they have to do in person, even in today's world. Can they communicate to professionals? And most importantly, are they financially responsible? had a trust review with a client right before the show, ⁓ this subject was brought up. And of one of the the clients indicated, she says, you know, what will what happens, you know, as far as being accountable? Can someone challenge the estate and say, let's say they're a beneficiary, hey, I want to where ⁓ you know where my being spent? you know, to the by the by the successor trustee. Well, a lot of cases they don't have to answer to anybody. Sometimes they do, depending upon how the trust documents were written. So again, are they financial responsible? Can they pay the bills? Can they communicate with it with the account and get taxes done? So on and so forth. Mistake number eleven. All right, I'm gonna make it I got I'm gonna hit my twelve. Mistake number eleven, not understanding current estate tax rules. as I shared with this client, you know, before the ⁓ the president got elected in twenty twenty five, ⁓ The estate planning industry was up in arms because we thought we were gonna have the sunset provision, right? The unified credit, which right now allows each you and your spouse to have $15 million of assets, so combined 30 million before estate taxes kick in. Well, for most people, that's not even a concern. let me tell you, as I shared with a client, when I got started in this business 35 years ago, that number was, I think, 1.4 or 2 million right around there per person. It doesn't take long to hit that. And you never know when the rules can change. So you have to understand current estate tax rules, the federal state tax exemption, as I just mentioned, state laws. There's a lot of states that have estate taxes. Need to know about that and plan for. strategies we get involved with. Business owners, a whole nother subject, and high net worth planning. And lastly, mistake number 12, not having an estate plan at all, right? Probate, court involvement, family disputes, delays, legal expenses, loss of privacy. Who's going to make the decisions if you don't? So think about this. was the last time you had your trust reviewed, your estate plan? ⁓ your beneficiary designations still reflect your wishes? ⁓ someone legally handle your finances if you became incapacitated tomorrow? Does your family know where your estate planning documents are? And again, lastly, are your children prepared to carry out your wishes? Those are one of many questions you need to ask yourself. ⁓ me tonight for the webinar. Send me an email, John at specialized trust.com. I'll see you there. And if not, I'll see you tomorrow on the John Sanchez show. God bless. Have a great afternoon.