Latest / The Jon Sanchez Show / Your Trust Says What? 7 Estate Planning Surprises Your Family Doesn't Want To Find

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Your Trust Says What? 7 Estate Planning Surprises Your Family Doesn't Want To Find · The Jon Sanchez Show

• Jon G. Sanchez: Afternoon to you. Welcome to the John Sanchez Show on News Talk 780KOH. Pleasure to be with you on a very exciting day on Wall Street. My goodness, finally we got some news. The downside was the market got a nice boost when the news came out that of course I'm going to share with you. And then we just kind of drifted lower and it kind of was all said and done at one o'clock. It kind of turned out to be just a somewhat of an average day today. We did get green showing up, but again, nowhere near of what we had earlier in the morning when this big news from the Treasury Department broke. So I'm going tell you about that, of course. Also, as you heard in the on the national news here momentarily, or a moment ago, big news with Moderna and Merck on a cancer treatment vaccine that they're working on. So that was very, very positive news there. And boy, did we get a move out of Morderna. Gonna tell you about that one also. So bring y'all up to date. It's Wednesday. That means I bring you an estate planning topic each and every Wednesday. And today, of course, I am going to do exactly that. So I've titled today's show Your trust says what? Seven estate planning surprises your family doesn't want to find out. So here's the scenario. You created your trust a few years ago. You signed the documents, you checked estate planning off of your personal things to-do list. But what if, what if your family discovers after you're gone, of course, that's when you always find these things out. Oops, the house isn't in the trust. Oops, the wrong trustee is named. Oops, your beneficiary designations don't match your wishes. Well, I want to make sure that doesn't happen to you. So I'm going to educate you on how we avoid this. And again, our seven estate planning surprises your family never, ever wants to discover. I know you don't want them to discover that either. So gonna be a great topic. Get to that in a moment. Let's get down to the stock market side of things today. So, what's this big news? Well, the big news that happened occurred this morning while we were still in the five o'clock hour. The Treasury Department made a massive announcement that rocked this world, the bond world, I should say, and the stock market again, temporarily. But like I said, it didn't hold. What did they do? As you especially on, I've been hitting it hard on the stock updates in the morning. and I believe I've mentioned it a number of times on the on the show. We've been watching the 30-year Treasury yield very, very closely. Yesterday, the 30-year Treasury or bond yield is the correct term, 30-year bond yield closed at a level that hasn't been added over 19 years. So what's the problem? Well, the problem is this again, as you, you know, heard again on the national news, presidents saying interest rates need to come down. Well, the bond market says something else. And I'm not going to get into why they keep driving the 30-year bond yield up, et cetera. That's a whole nother subject. But they have. And of course, we've seen other yields follow along, not quite to the extent, not to the level, such as a 19-year high on the 10-year or the five or the twos or anything like that. But the overall, the yield of trend, of course, has been up. And as that happens, less likelihood of the Fed cutting interest rates. So the government decided to take things into their own hands. Instead of waiting for the Fed, which again, no one knows what the Fed's next move is, government said, you know what? We're going to do a little jockeying ourselves. So the government today, the Treasury Department specifically, said that they are going to double the size of their government debt repurchases, lending support to the long dated bonds. Now, what the heck does that mean? Well, what that means is they're going to double their purchases of 10 year and 30 year bonds when these bonds mature. And so by doing so, let's just I let me think of through an example. So let's say you know, you've got one bond worth a thousand dollars. Let's make it really simple, right? It's typically what a bond trades for. Okay, bonds have a maturity. So when those 30 year, let's just pick on the 30 year, when that 30 year bond that was issued 30 years ago matures tomorrow, the government, instead of just buying that bond back, says, you know what, I'm gonna buy another bond, another bond, and another bond. So again, double of what they normally do. So they're gonna double the size of their government debt repurchases. So, you know, as some were saying, there there's a actually been a lot of criticism. This may be one of the reasons that the the stock market didn't end up, you know, closing anywhere near where it was when this news broke in the pre market session. We shot up where we're you know, basically yeah, 304 points. I'm seeing in my notes, highest level in the pre market session. But we closed on the Dow side up 119. So you see how we pulled back there. So the the criticism is this, right? I'm gonna read you a comment by a guy named Tony Miano, global investment strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. He says, While the announcement may provide short-term relief, we do not believe it fundamentally changes the outlook for the long-term yield. Because it hasn't just been us, folks, by the way, I should mention that that we've been facing these higher yields, right? The tenure Japanese bond reached its highest level in 30 years, 30 years, just this week. The German 30 year bond, it hit its highest level point since 2011. Rates in France reached the highest level dating back to 2008. So this is again a global situation. So some are just calling this financial engineering. And many are making it very clear, and I want to make it very clear with you also. This isn't the government reducing their debt. All it is is saying we're going to buy back more. It's going to provide liquidity in the system, which should ease bond yields overall. And today they did. Today it absolutely did. The test is going to be how this market really reacts over the next few days. Let's just call it by the end of the week. Let's see if that 30-year, the 10-year, et cetera, let's see if those yields continue to fall as they did today, or if we're going to be back to the norm. Because see, we've got one major problem. The US fiscal debt jumped to four hundred and thirty two point three billion dollars last month. Let me repeat that. Four hundred and thirty two point three billion in July. That is the highest monthly total for the US fiscal deficit dating back to March of twenty twenty one. Pushing the year to date shortfall to nearly one point eight trillion dollars. Do you know what our government is paying right now in interest? Interest paid to finance the nearly forty trillion dollars of national debt has cost the federal government, i.e., you and I, one point two trillion dollars year to date. Isn't that scary? Forty trillion dollars in national debt. We're paying the halfway through the year, one point two trillion. So let's just keep the math simple. So by the end of the year, here we are, we're gonna be at what a little over two trillion dollars? And just an interest alone, that folks is painful. And that's why, again, the bond market has been acting, among many other reasons, the way that it has. It's just you know, investors, the bond market, as I've always said, the bond traders are the real smart ones, right? This the stock market's the passenger in the bus, the bond market is the driver. So again, we when Scott Basent, the Treasury Secretary, came out today, said they're going to increase these buybacks for the long-term dated maturities. from 2 billion to at least 4 billion. I want to put another thing in perspective. The bond market in itself is worth about $31.5 trillion. So excuse me. So when you say, okay, we're going to buy two to four billion dollars, and we're only doing this, they're going to start in September. They're only going to do it through November. Maybe they'll continue it. Who knows? But it's not that long period of time. That's where some of the criticism is coming in. So, you know, the algorithms and unsophisticated traders, they react to going, my God, this is the greatest thing in the world. But again, if you really look at it, it's it's really just a drop in the bucket. It really is. So this government accelerated double back buyback. Again, as I said, I want to be real clear on this one. What does it do? Gave us a short-term decrease in interest rates. Again, the key is going to be if this will last. It improved market liquidity from some of the you know less traded instruments. In other words, ensuring that there are enough buyers and sellers in a given market to establish a reliable price because the buyers they've been on strike for the 30-year government bonds. They really have. No one wants to touch them. Well, maybe now they do. Who knows? I don't know. So the markets have long asked the Treasury to increase these buybacks. Matter of fact, newly issued debt tends to be, you know, trading very with healthy liquidity, but Buyers can later become very scarce, as I said, for maturities that are less than the original term issued. So, for example, a 30-year treasury bond issued in May of 2020, with 20 tw with what, 24 years remaining to its maturity, traded today at roughly 45 cents on the dollar. So removing these so-called off-the-run securities from the market frees up the balance sheet of institutions to buy more liquid assets. That's the other game that goes on behind the scenes, which again would put downward pressure. On rates. So, you know, remember that bond, like I said, that was issued in 2020. It's got 24 years left, only trading 45 cents on the dollar. Well, remember, as long as you hold that to maturity to the 30 years, you're going to get your original thousand bucks back if that's, you know, what you paid for. But in the meantime, yeah, that's painful on your on your balance sheet if you're a big pension plan or government entity or a country around the world buying US government debt, right? That's painful. Look at that and go, holy moly, that hurts. So again, I would be real clear. The Treasury is not retiring any debt or engaging in quantitative easing programs, which was another criticism of today. People went, here's the Fed doing a little quantitative easing. But keep this in mind. When we talk about quantitative easing, what government entity has done that in past? It's the Fed. Because remember, the Fed can print money. They can buy what they want. However, the Treasury Department does not have that capability, or I'll say that luxury. They need to fund the buybacks by issuing more. And that's the kind of the Ponzi scheme of the US government bond market, right? We need that money. We we lend it out. We in other words, we have the bond auctions, you know, almost on a daily basis. Government gets that money. They use it to operate the government. And then sure enough, bond comes due and they got to either let it mature or they, you know, well, they have to pay it back, bottom line. And so how do they pay it back? They issue more bonds. And that's where kind of the Ponzi scheme theme comes in when you talk about the government. I'm not saying Ponzi scheme in a bad sense, it's just what it is. We're paying, you know, we're paying for today's debt, on on on debt that we've taken out, you know, years and years ago, meaning we've issued bonds. So again, very, very complicated mechanism, but it was a driving force to the market. I'll tell you what the market did when we come back and then we'll get into those bond yields. Let's turn it over to the sex man on the right now traffic center. Mm. Welcome back to the John Sancho Show on News Talk 780 KOH. All right, here's how we finished for the market. Then we'll get to our estate planning topic. Seven estate planning surprises your family does not want to find. All right. So on the Dow side of things, like I said, we're up over 300 when that news broke about the government's buyback of the 30 year bond and the 10 year. But we finished with a gain of just 120. Big deal. Point two two percent, close to fifty-three thousand four sixty-three. NASDAQ rose 40 one a fraction of a percent to 26,331, and the SP higher by 16 or 0.21% to finish the day at 7,707. oil prices edged up again, 80 cent rise, $85.68 a barrel. Gold, so with this announcement by the Treasury, what we saw happen, we saw the dollar fall about eight tenths of a percent versus a basket of global currencies. So the falling dollar obviously helps out gold prices, and gold shot up today, $125 gain. Per ounce at $4,545.80. To the bond market side, the 10-year treasury today, finished the day after that big announcement, down five basis points to a yield close of 465. And for the heck of it, even though it's not a Tuesday or a Thursday, I did check according to Mortgage News Daily. I wanted to see what the 30-year government or excuse me, the 30-year mortgage did. And according to Mortgage News Daily, the 30 year mortgage only fell three basis points today to a yield of six point seven two percent. All right. You're now up to date. So we'll see. Like I said, the real test will be what is the bond market's reaction over the next couple of days after today's big news. Now, before I get to that estate planning topic, I do want to real quickly jump into the story. What a move today with Merck and Moderna. A experimental personalized cancer vaccine that's a joint effort between Merck and Moderna showed some very positive initial results in the first ever late states trial. This is what the companies announced earlier this morning. And this brings them one step closer, of course, to filing for approval of the treatment option. So the MNRA-based shot is a combination with Merck's immunotherapy key truda, met key goals in the phase three trial of more than 1,100 patients with higher risk or advanced melanoma, whose detectable cancer has been completely removed through surgery. The combination regimen met the main study goal of significantly extending the time patients lived without their melanoma returning compared to Ketruda alone. The treatment also reduced the risk of cancer spreading to distant parts of the body. Those results build on positive or build on a positive phase two trial data on the same regiment earlier this year. So what did these stocks do? Well, like I said, what a heck of a day for them. Merck was the quiet one with $17.05 gain, 12.61%, closed at $152.22. But Moderna was the big star, a 176.97% increase up $111.42 to close at $174.38. So keep a close eye on that one. retail, we're this is the week of retail earnings. target lows, they reported some numbers that were fairly decent overall. Target finished the day with a gain of six dollars and fifty-six cents, four point three percent to one fifty-nine three, lows up five dollars and seven cents, two point three five percent to two twenty seventy-one. Home builders did great. I'm not gonna bore you with all the the closes there, but again, lower interest rate environment. Home builders usually do well. And then Newmont was a standout because of the rising gold prices, gained $9.10 on Newmont up 7.85%. 125.08 again. That whole group was very strong. Amazon had a good session today, higher by six dollars and thirty-nine cents, two point four six percent increase to two sixty-five eighty-four. And Tesla rose fourteen dollars and twenty-five cents, four point two three percent to three fifty-one twelve. All right, you're up to date. Let's get started on our on our topic again. Seven estate planning surprises your family does not want to find. So, as I said at the beginning of the show, here's a scenario. You created a trust years ago, you signed the documents, you went, I'm done, right? You've heard me say this before. Check it off your personal things to-do list. But again, what if your family discovers, after you're gone, of course, that the house isn't in the trust, the brokerage accounts aren't in the trust, or the wrong trustee is named, or your beneficiary designations don't match. Let your imaginations wander. So let me kind of give you a a scenario. Imagine your mom passes away. Of course, the children are grieving. But mom always told them, Don't worry, everything is going to be fine. I've got a trust. Everything is taken care of. So again, mom's now gone. They blow the dust off the trust document, the notebook, they open it up. And that's when the surprise begins. The successor trustee, which, if you're not familiar with that term, the successor trustee is the individual or individuals, if we have co successor trustees. That you've named in your trust to handle your estate. They're, they're, like I said, they're the quarterback. They're the big dog. So the successor trustee mom named 20 years ago, guess what? The kids find out she's no longer alive. Or maybe she's not in your mom, you know, your former mom's life at all. The house she bought eight years ago, well, here's a common mistake we see all the time. House was never transferred into the name of the trust. The one account that has a beneficiary designation, nobody expected. And the trust distributes the inheritance completely different from what the kids remember mom telling them she was gonna do. There's just one problem. Mom is not here anymore to explain it or better yet, fix it, right? She's passed. So the absolute worst time to discover a problem in an estate plan is of course after the person who created it is gone. Nothing can be done at that point. So today, when we come back from the break, we're going to count down seven surprises families discover when an estate plan has not kept up with real life. Let's turn it over to Jack Saban. He's got news traffic and with The John Sancho show on News Talk 780K again. The government announcing today a doubling of their efforts on buybacks of third-year government bonds and also 10 years, about two to four billion doubling. so we had a nice pullback in bond yields again. 10 year was down five basis points to 465. That helped the stock market, which rose 119 or 120, excuse me, on the Dow. NASDAQ gained 41 and the SP higher by 16. All right, we're just beginning our estate planning topic. And again, if you feel that we can be of any assistance to you at specialized trust and estate plans. Please just visit our website at specializetrust.com. You can see the various packages we offer, our pricing, our process, which no one has, so on and so forth. Again, specialized trust.com. Okay, so once again, estate planning, seven of them that I've created. Seven estate planning surprises your family does not want to find. So I'm gonna kind of go in reverse. I'm gonna start with number seven. Wait, this trust is 20 years old. So again, put yourself as I go through this, put yourself in the position. That you are the adult child. Mom and dad are gone now. And now you just blew the dust off the estate planning notebook. And now you're trying to put all the pieces together and figure this out. So again, you look it up, it has the date the trust was created, and you go, Huh, wait a minute, this thing is twenty years old. Well remember, creating a trust is not a once in a lifetime event. I finally saw someone, I was reading a Kiplinger article yesterday, and it was a pretty good article regarding estate planning. And the financial advisor who wrote this article said the exact same line that I have said for a million years. So I'm gonna I'm gonna take it, which is where I keep telling you, an estate planning, an estate plan, excuse me, is a living, breathing document. This guy took my line. but it's true. An estate plan is not a once in a lifetime event when you create that trust. It is a living, breathing document. It changes as your life changes, or at least it should. But we as humans, we think we get it done once and we can file away and just let it accumulate dust. No, no, no, no, no. Because remember, think about this. I don't care if your trust was written a year ago, five years, twenty years. I had a lady contact me yesterday who wrote it. her trust was written, I believe it was two thousand and one. And she could not justify spending money with me to have a new trust created. She goes, Nothing's really changed. I said, Really? And I won't tell you the rest of the conversation, but is your life different today than it was a year ago? Five, 10, 15, 20 years ago? I know mine is. Changes all the time. Assets are bought, assets are sold. You love family members, you hate family members. I mean, list goes on. Those are things that require your trust to be restated. So again, think about how much has changed when the kids open this notebook. That was written 20 years ago. Divorce, marriage, death, children, grandchildren, new home, new state, new business, new assets, change in relationships, on and on and on. Change in your financial circumstances. Probably your wealth is a lot greater today than it was 20 years ago, I'm guessing. Change laws? yeah, all the time. And yet the trust still, in this example, reflects the family that existed in 2006. Doesn't make any sense, does it? I see it every day. So let me ask you a question. If I was in a room with you and I said, When was the last time your trust was reviewed? Not when it was created, but when was the last time your trust was reviewed? Could you answer me? Because the answer that I commonly am coming across is never. Let's go to surprise number six. That person's our successor trustee. So remember, the successor trustee is the person that you have delegated in your estate plan in your revocable trust to take over your estate. They're the ones that are to manage it, right? You're dead. They're the big dog. So use an example. Let's say your mom and dad created their trust in, I don't know, let's say they were, I don't know, 47, 48 years old. Right. It's very typical when people start to get serious about estate planning. But at that point, you know, mom and dad were young and they named your dad's brother Bob as the successor trustee. Makes sense. I say this all the time. You name a relative, usually, you know, older brother, sister, if you're not gonna name your kids. Well, you know, Bob was a great guy. But let's fast forward. We're thirty years later. Bob is now eighty two years old, probably having some health issues. Heck, maybe he's already deceased. Maybe dad and Bob haven't spoken in the last 10 or 15 years. Maybe Bob lives 2,000 miles away. Perhaps mom and dad simply would not choose Bob today for all these reasons and maybe more. But yet, nobody has changed the document. So remember this. The successor trustee that you appoint today in your brand new trust or 20 years ago, it's not an honorary title. It's not any designation that cannot be changed at any time. And while I'm on this subject, again, this came up with two estate plans that we created today. Remember, please, when you name your successor trustee, let that person know. Get their approval. Because as you're gonna find out here in a second, it is a huge, huge responsibility. And for all sake, please make sure that your successor trustee, that your estate documents allow compensation for that man or woman because it is a tough job with huge responsibility. So, what's that successor trustee gonna be doing? Well, first of all, they got to locate and protect the assets. They have a fiduciary responsibility, they've got to manage the investments, they have to pay all the bills. They got to work with CPAs and attorneys and you know professionals. They have to handle tax matters. yeah, that's a fun one. They have to communicate with beneficiaries because you know some of those beneficiaries are going to be going, Hey, when do I get my money? How much am I getting? When am I going to get it? Those are real basic ones that every trustee goes through. let's see, what else? they probably have to sell the property, right? Because usually after the the the second person is gone. what happens, of course? Liquidation of the estate. Gotta start selling assets. So they have to do that one also. Then they have to make distributions. They have to understand the estate planning document. Who gets what? When do they get it? Any strings attached, et cetera. And by the way, they better maintain really good records because they have a fiduciary, a legal responsibility to follow every single word of that living trust. If they don't, they could be held personally liable by the courts. So my question you is this if your successor trustee had to take over tomorrow morning, is that successor trustee the person that you want still? If the answer is no, it's time for a restatement. Surprise number five. yeah, I see this every day. The house isn't in the trust. I've got a trust, so I avoid probate. My house automatically is gonna avoid probate, regardless if it's in the trust or not. Not true. Because remember, Trust has to control the assets that are properly owned by the trust. That's what it does. So even though you have a trust, but your house is still in your name or yours and your spouse's name, joint tenants' rights or survivorship, or single man, single woman, that's not in the trust. It's going to probate. Again, folks, I see it every day. That's one of your largest assets. Please, if you have an estate plan, a living trust, please make sure that that house gets moved into the name of the trust. Otherwise, again, maybe all your other assets are in the trust. They're going to avoid probate, but that house, your biggest asset, it's not. So please make sure that that trust is titled there. That's again what we call funding, right? I'm gonna bring that term back. So I'm gonna give you an example on this one that I created. Let's say mom creates the Smith Family Trust. Let's say she did it, you know, back in 2010. Her house is transferred into it, so good job, mom. But then she sells the house in 2018 and buys, of course, another house. But the new property ends up titled individually and it's never transferred into the trust. Mom still thinks, hey, my house is in my trust. Not true. Your other house was in the trust, not this one. This is one of the things we do when we create an estate plan for our clients. We actually do all the title paperwork. We make sure that that house gets funded and the title work is created and completed and recorded, et cetera, to make sure that that house is properly titled into the name of the trust. Surprise number four. But Dad says we get the account. How many times have you heard that when you're dealing with estate issues? Dad said, mom said, Well, here comes the beneficiary designation part of my mistakes. Dad says, you know, I want everything to go equally to my three kids, right? That's the way most parents do it. But dad has a financial account with a beneficiary designation, an IRA, but it only names one child. Because I probably should, Dad, you know, dad probably had his wife as the primary beneficiary, but the wife is gone. He never changed the beneficiary designation on that IRA application. So the wife is gone. Now dad just dies. Obviously, it's not going to get changed again. The successor trustee is going to go to the financial institution and go, okay, here's the death certificate. You know, Joe's gone. My trust says the kids get equal shares. The custodian goes, no, that's not what Joe set up. Joe had 100% contingent beneficiary going to his one child. How do you think the other two kids are going to feel? Not anything that a parent wants to go through. None. So remember, the beneficiary designation on your retirement account, your IRAs, 401ks, 403Bs, et cetera, that beneficiary designation is going to override what you put in your trust. So in this example, Joe may have put in his trust. I want a third of my, all of my estates, including my retirement accounts, to go to my children equally. But that's not how it's going to happen. Because again, the IRA application overrides what Joe put in his trust. That's why one thing that we do after we're we're done completing the trust, we tell the client that these are the accounts that need to be funded, the taxable accounts, and these are your retirement accounts that you need to verify your beneficiary designations and percentages to make sure it all matches with what's in the trust. Surprise number three, I'll tell you about when we come back. Let's wrap it up with the sacks man. Welcome back to the John Sancho Show on News Talk seven eighty KOH. I've been talking about seven estate planning surprises your family does not want to find. But before I get back to my seven, I think I have what two or three left. I want to make sure I don't run out of time and I wanna give you a little self test to be thinking about. Let's see how you do. Here's the questions I want you to ask yourself. When was the last time your trust was reviewed? Is your current home titled correctly? Have you checked your financial beneficiaries? I'm sorry, checked your beneficiaries in your financial accounts. Do you know exactly who your successor trustee is? And is that the person you still want? Does that person know that they are the successor trustee? If that person couldn't serve, who's next? What we call a backup successor trustee. Have your children or grandchildren Been born since the trust was created. Has anyone named in your trust died? Has anyone got married or divorced? Have you moved from another state? Have you acquired significant assets? And could your successor trustee locate everything tomorrow? If you cannot confidently answer those questions, please give us a call at specialized trust and estate plans. Let us take a look at what you have. Like I told you before. We have some very high-end technology that allows us to take your existing trust, put it in our four AI models, and produce a summary to tell you exactly what's going on. And then you can decide what you need to do with our advice. Let's go to specializetrust.com. All right, back to my list. A couple more to go, like I said. let's see. left off with mom said that's not how we're supposed to inherit it. You know, mom told me something different. So this is where trust reviews get really fascinating. Because remember, your parents, they remember the conversation they had when the trust is created, but they don't necessarily remember what the document actually says. Who does? Right? That's why we produce a what we call a waterfall chart for our clients so they can see it graphically as well as a a written summary form. They always have that, they can always share it with their kids. But mom and dad didn't have that. So maybe they thought, you know what, everything's gonna go equally to my children. But there's language involving Persturpeus distributions. What that term means, it's a Latin term. Means if your beneficiary that's going to receive, let's say it's one of your children, pass away before you do, then it starts going down the lineage. It goes to their children, if they're not around, grandchildren, so on and so forth. It creates a lot of confusion. And that's part of the language inside of a trust. But that can change a lot of things. specific gifts, right? I come across this all the time. I want to give this child, this grandchild a certain dollar amount. Well, if it's significant. Should they really get a third of the estate like you intentionally thought they were? A lot of times the answer is no, because you had a lot less assets when you created this trust 20 years ago, or five, or 10 or whatever it may be, than you do now. You get my point. Remember this family memories don't control the trust, the documents do. Surprise number two. Where in the heck is everything? This one is so overlooked. You see, Dad had a beautiful estate plan. Congrats, Dad. Great job. The question is, where is it? Where are the deeds? Where are the insurance policies? What financial institutions do you use? What are your passwords? Who's the CPA? Who's the financial advisor? Do you have some things tucked into a safety deposit box we don't know about? Or do you have some things tucked into a home safe that we don't have the combination to? Where are all the business documents? What debts do you have? What automatic payments like your Social Security need to be stopped? Or pensions? What subscriptions do you have that are on auto pay? What property do you have? What vehicles? What collectibles? Again, imagine when you are a successor trustee, if things are not organized and properly documented and a solid estate plan, you're essentially reconstructing someone's entire financial life all at the same time while you're grieving. It's not a good combination. This is why I should mention also we offer every one of our estate plan clients a family meeting. And this is where we do them on Saturdays. We hold a family meeting, a video call with the clients and their children or grandchildren, whoever they want to invite. And we go over our estate report, showing them again graphically, who gets what, who's in charge. No dollar amounts are mentioned, but that way everybody's on the same page. There's no discussion at Thanksgiving going, hey, you know what? I wonder, you know, did mom and dad get that estate plan done we've been talking about? It's all in the open. Family meetings, absolutely critical. Let me wrap up with surprise number one. But wait a minute, mom had a trust. We thought everything was taken care of. Well, again, people treat creating a trust like buying a fire exchange, fire extinguisher. They get one, they think they're done. They're fully protected from a fire. Not the case. Remember this, folks. An estate plan is a system. The documents, the asset titling, the beneficiary designations, the successor trustees, the powers of attorney, the healthcare directives, real estate, financial accounts, insurance. Family communications, funding, all of these pieces need to work together. Look at them as a big puzzle. If your trust hasn't been reviewed, and if it's not up to date, that puzzle's sitting on your kitchen table with hundreds of pieces everywhere. Get a solid estate plan done. All those pieces come together. You can see the clear picture. Or more importantly, your beneficiaries can see a clear picture. Because the trust isn't the plan. The trust is part of the plan. All right. I hope you learned a thing or two. I always love covering this with you. Again, if we can be of assistance on your estate planning needs, give us a holler or go to specializetrust.com. You'll see everything there. God bless. We'll see you tomorrow on the John Sanchez Show.