Estate Planning In Michigan

Archive for November, 2008

The Problem With Michigan Trust Kits

Living trusts have been aggressivly marketed to the Michigan public.  Unfortunatly, there are many non-lawyers out their marketing trust kits in Michigan or trust preperation services.  Buying one of these “trust kits” can be a huge financial mistake that not only effects you but also your loved ones.

The targeted customers of these salesmen are typically seniors.  They will lure the seniores in by either going door to door or holding free seminars.  More often than not, these seminars will not be taught by an attorney, but by a salseman.  They will advertised to the senior a one-size fits all estate plan, usually for over $2500.  Quite often these “trust kits” end up being a fill in the blank type document and the customer never even meets with an attorney.

There have been reports of Michigan citizens losing over $200,000 to Federal Estate taxes based off these poorly drafted plans.

If you had a estate plan or “trust kit” drafted by one of these outfits, contact a Michigan estate planning lawyer, as soon as possible to rectify the matter and create an estate plan that serves your wishes and provides for your loved ones.

What to Ask Your Financial Planner in this Turbulent Market

Wathcing the news today and they quoted a Kiplingers article that offered some questions to ask your financial planner during these turbulent times.  Those questions were:

• How have your investments performed?
• How do your investments meet time horizons?
• What adjustments have been made due to the turbulent economy?
• How and when will the planner provided feedback and updates?

Tuesday Topic | When To Update Your Estate Plan in Michigan

Every Tuesday I have a meeting with other business people in the area and we each talk a few minutes about our practice.  As a Michigan estate planning lawyer I talked about the need to review your estate plan.  I was asked a question about how often to review your estate plan the night before as well.

What I told the group was that our firm believes in annual reviews of your estate plan.  We care very much about our clients and the hard work that was put into thier estate plan, we do not want their plan to fail due to a lack of maintenance.

Setting up an estate plan is not a “one-and-done” propostion.  Just like going to the dentist, an estate plan needs at least annual check ups.  Occasionally like a dentist there will be major work, such as an amendment to the plan.  But as a whole, only a few tune ups each year.

The reason for the need for check-ups is threefold.

1. Your family situation may change.  There may be a new child to plan for, a divorce, marriage, etc.
2. Your assets may change.  Have you added new bank accounts, bought a new house, new life insurance, etc?
3. The laws change.  There have been many changes to both Michigan and Federal law in the past 10 years alone that effect estate planning.  With the new administration there is bound to be new Federal Estate tax laws as well.

So, have you updated your estate plan?  If you have an estate plan with another attorney, have they cared enough to contact you?

Quicken Will Maker Software

David Goldman, a Jacksonville estate planning attorney, and the author of the Florida Estate Planning Lawyer Blog, wrote a great article on his thoughts regarding Quicken Software to prepare your estate plan titled Using Quicken to prepare a trust: The good, the bad, and the ugly! You can read his article here:

http://www.floridaestateplanninglawyerblog.com/2008/10/using_quicken_to_prepare_a_tru.html

He really makes some great points.  This same analysis can be applied to any of the Do-it-yourself estate planning software, such as Suze Orman or any others.  In conclusion David writes:

There are many mistakes in the Quicken documents, most disturbing might be some of the things that are not included in a Quicken trust. Quicken gives none of the flexibility to a trust that make it useful for the common person. A trustee under a Quicken trust could not do anything without creating liability to a beneficiary because by default they must act as a prudent trustee. If you have a trust created by Quicken 2009, 2008, 2007 or a previous version, you should have it reviewed by an estate planning lawyer.

Should My House Go into My Trust in Michigan?

A common question clients have is whether they should put their house into their revocable living trust in Michigan.  Like most questions, my answer is “it depends.”  This is where estate planning becomes more than just preparing documents or using software such as Willmaker, Quicken, or Suze Orman.  There is actually counseling involved based on the situation.

is the client single or married.  Do you want to destroy the tenancy by the entirety, where Michigan has afforded certain benefits?  Is the goal to avoid probate?  What about estate recover, does that have an effect?  Unfortunately, there are a few factors to consider when making this decision.

Fortunately, a quality Michigan estate planning lawyer will be able to walk you through the scenerios to decide upon the best answer in your situation.

Estate Planning Weekend Round Up

Here are some of last weeks estate planning news across the internet.

• The Modesto Bee had an article by Valentine Sabuco with the title “Is it time to get your estate planning house in order?”.  In the article she states “that estate planning is a very importnat component of everyone’s financial planning, regardless of the size of the estate.”  I could not agree more with her.  Read the rest of the article here: http://www.modbee.com/business/story/484500.html
• Michael E. Andrews wrote an article for Northindystar.com entitled “Estate plan safeguards assets, loved ones.”  In the article he lists six quality reason why you should have an estate plan.  Many of these have been covered on this blog already.  You can read his article here.
• Troy Neff wrote a good article in the Toledo Free Press entitled “Don’t Try this at Home”.  In the article Mr. Neff tells the story of a client who as a “do-it-yourselfer” and prepared his estate planning documents with a software package, without a lawyer.  Well, when it was all said in done, the client’s plan was fraught with issues.  You can read the full story here: http://www.toledofreepress.com/2008/10/31/don%E2%80%99t-try-this-at-home/

That’s all for this week across the web.  What we can take from it:

• The time for estate planning is NOW.
• I’ve yet to encounter anyone over the age 18 in Michigan who does not have a reason to complete a least  a basic estate plan.
• If you are going to do an estate plan, do it right.  Sometimes an poorly drafted estate plan is worse then having any type of estate plan at all.