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DIY March 2020

Just like you, I woke up this morning and started scrolling through the news feed on my phone. One of the first headlines I saw was from the Wall Street Journal: “Estate Planning Goes Digital...”. When I saw the headline, I smiled and clicked right on through to check out what kind of solutions one of the nation’s most trusted financial news outlets had to offer.&nbsp;
Yikes.&nbsp;
Instead of finding solutions, I saw an advertisement for apps selling (or giving you a “free”) Last Will and Testament. I see a lot of these apps because Google knows my searches are heavy in the tech and estate planning worlds. I always feel like the old man yelling: “Get off my lawn!” while shaking a cane when I see these articles. I love modern solutions and innovation, but these apps are neither.
From the tech side, these programs are not innovative, cutting edge or new. People were buying this software off the shelves at Office Depot back in the 80s and 90s! Remember taking out a floppy disk and downloading software to your desktop? Nothing has changed except you can now populate the boxes in the questionnaire from your personal computer or smartphone and the computing mechanism filling in the blanks on the form document operates remotely in the cloud.&nbsp;
As for the estate planning side, Yikes again. As financial planners, accountants and families that have navigated the probate process will tell you, DIY wills can make matters worse than dying intestate (a fancy legal word for dying without a will).&nbsp;
I love technology and spend every day trying to find a way to make the estate planning process easier. The constant complication I run into every time is that self-help and estate planning just do not mix. When you file taxes yourself through TurboTax, you can always file an amended return or work things out with the IRS. When you install a new toilet flap with help from a YouTube video, you can always call a plumber if the toilet overflows. If someone dies with a DIY will that has a mistake based on a misunderstanding (or if executed improperly), “the toothpaste is out of the tube.” Family and friends are left to unravel the mess that was created by an innocent mistake.
Many estate planners are not bothered by these articles because the people using these services are not their target audience. A lot of planners (not all) want clients with complex planning issues that can pay larger fees (which, coincidentally, are closer to becoming repeat business as probate clients). Millennials often lack the complexity required for premium fees and are also the least likely to actually begin and follow through on the estate planning process. While it is difficult to get anyone to do their estate planning (without a financial planner dragging them into the office by the ear!), my goal is to elicit the feedback from clients saying that my process was WAY EASIER and CONVENIENT than they thought it could be.&nbsp;
After navigating the legal guardianship process for three clients, I saw first hand what happens when DIY fails. I pivoted my practice to find the middle ground to help younger families get their estate planning done with this motto: Modern Fast Dependable.
If you would like to know more about my virtual estate planning or online “Documents Ready” option, you can visit: <a href="https://estateplanningtn.com/documentsreadyguide">https://estateplanningtn.com/documentsreadyguide</a> and read testimonials from past clients at <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=carter+shelton+jones&amp;oq=carter+shel&amp;aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0l3j69i60l2j69i61.5422j0j4&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8#lrd=0x8864655f74cbc04b:0xfcd627f402bb1155,1,,,">Testimonials and Reviews</a>.
I will also jump on Facebook Live today at 2 PM to answer any questions (not intended to give legal advice and no attorney-client relationship created).
You can visit my website at <a href="https://estateplanningtn.com/">https://estateplanningtn.com/</a>

Just like you, I woke up this morning and started scrolling through the news feed on my phone. One of the first headlines I saw was from the Wall Street Journal

So you’re stuck at home and thinking about doing an online will? Let’s Chat!

Mindful Estate Planning

Everyone has a different motivation for beginning the estate planning process. Often a couple has just welcomed their first child. Others are in the process of retiring and find their original Wills that were drafted right after their first child was born. For some, it’s when they move to a new state. One of the most common reasons, however, is that a loved one or a friend has passed away.
The estate planning process is unique in our society because it is one of the very few times that we are forced to focus on our mortality. We typically behave as if death weren’t part of life. Clients prompted by this last situation usually proceed through the estate planning process more mindfully. While no one wants to think about his or her own death, this group of clients has been forced into the mindset by their loss.&nbsp;
Regardless of what gets you started, I would encourage you to view the process as an opportunity to reflect on life rather than focus on death. Estate planning can prompt you to appreciate the people in your life that mean the most to you. While deciding whom to list for each job in your estate plan, consider how you can enjoy those people more. Contemplating your child being raised by another person, while uncomfortable, provides the opportunity for you to express to that potential guardian how much you appreciate and trust her.&nbsp;
A particular mindfulness exercise that I ran across recently focuses on the visualization that you have died. &nbsp;What are the things that you have been reluctant to do or try because of fear of what other people think? What are some risks that you have not taken because you think you might fail? Imagining that you don’t have the opportunity to take these chances is a great motivation to take action. Live intentionally now and make sure the people you name in your documents know that you trust and care for them. At the very least, It is a good excuse to ask some friends to go out to dinner!&nbsp;

Everyone has a different motivation for beginning the estate planning process. Often a couple has just welcomed their first child. 

Mindful Estate Planning as a Reminder to Live Intentionally

Four Reasons Your Financial Planner

Estate Planning is not a space reserved only for attorneys – in fact, your financial advisor can be one of the most important people to help make sure your estate plan succeeds.
1. Your Planner Knows You Best
Financial advisors devote a considerable amount of time to understanding their clients’ lives and goals. They know better than anyone else what your ultimate goals are financially. &nbsp;Because your planner is familiar with your family dynamics and understands the roles that Guardians, Trustees and Executors play in the estate administration process, she is able to help you analyze who should be chosen for these roles if you are having trouble making the decision alone. Your financial advisor can also help you find a trustworthy estate planning attorney to draft an estate plan for you that achieves these goals.
2. Execution of the Plan (Titling and Beneficiary Designations)
One of the most important parts of executing an estate plan is correctly titling accounts and making sure that the beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance follow the estate plan so that the assets are distributed correctly. According to recent studies, less than forty percent of retirement accounts have a secondary beneficiary. While your estate planning attorney drafts the legal documents, it is typically your responsibility to confirm that your accounts are titled correctly and that the beneficiary designations on your retirement accounts and life insurance have been updated to reflect the plan. Your financial planner knows where all of your accounts are located and has extensive experience re-titling accounts and designating beneficiaries. Many planners are happy to help you complete any necessary changes.&nbsp;
3. Hold You Accountable
While you may only visit an estate planning attorney once or twice to complete your estate plan, you have an ongoing relationship with your financial planner. She knows about significant events or changes in your life and can be diligent in pointing out how these developments affect your estate plan. &nbsp;The financial advisor can also remind you to review your estate planning documents periodically as these changes occur.&nbsp;
4. Help You in a Time of Crisis
Surviving spouses often lean heavily on the help of a financial planner throughout the estate administration process. &nbsp;A planner can be a buffer between a surviving spouse and the financial steps (and stress) that happen upon the death of a loved one. &nbsp;It’s a great relief to a surviving spouse to have a planner completing the necessary paperwork for life insurance claims and retirement account rollovers. &nbsp;The financial planner’s familiarity with your estate plan and understanding of the estate administration process allows him to be particularly helpful during this process.&nbsp;
It is always nice to have the financial planner involved in the estate planning process from the start because they tend to be instrumental in helping the estate administration process go smoothly in the event of a tragedy.&nbsp;

Estate Planning is not a space reserved only for attorneys – in fact, your financial advisor can be one of the most important people

Four Reasons Your Financial Planner is a Key Part of the Estate Planning Process

5 Things You Should Do AFTER You Sign your Will

You beat the odds and got your estate planning done, now what?
The foundation of an estate plan is without a doubt the documents. Once you have received your estate planning documents, here are some tips and tricks to help your loved ones through a complicated and stressful time. 

1. Send copies of all documents to your financial planner.&nbsp;
Your financial planner knows where all of your accounts are and can be a great person to guide your surviving spouse or your loved ones after you are gone. Your financial planner will also likely need a copy of the documents to confirm that your beneficiary designations correctly reflect the choices you made in your estate documents. Oftentimes, the financial planner quarterbacks the estate administration process for the survivors, and with access to the documents, he or she can provide copies of health care directives and power of attorneys to the named fiduciaries.
You can also send copies of your documents to any of the people named in them. The person (or people) named in your Advance Health Care Directive should know that they are able to make health care decisions for you if you are incapacitated, and will want to have a copy of that authorization digitally so they can print it out in a case of emergency. The named executor or co-executors must know where the original will is located, because without an original will, probate becomes very difficult and expensive. As a side note, do not put your will in a safe deposit box at your bank. More often than not, this results in the safe deposit box having to be drilled out, which is very expensive. Even a safe in your house can be hard for your executor to access. I tell clients that it is more important that the executor be able to find the documents than that the documents be safe. If your house burns down, we can always sign new documents. In the extremely uncommon case that something happened to the documents and you at the same time, an attorney can almost always probate a copy of the will. 

2. Confirm that Taxable Accounts are titled correctly and Beneficiary Designations are updated.&nbsp;
If you sign your estate planning documents but don’t correctly title your accounts and update your beneficiary designations, you may have wasted your time and money (and caused an even larger problem). Account Titles and Beneficiary Designations take precedence over anything written in your will. If you have a joint checking account from high school with your mom and you pass away, your mom is going to get all of the money in that account while your spouse will get none (spousal elective share is a topic for another day). It’s the same story for life insurance beneficiaries. Your husband (or wife) is not going to be pleased when he or she finds out that your sister is getting all of the funds in your IRA because you forgot to update the primary beneficiary after you got married. &nbsp;It is also imperative to make sure that no funds are left to minor children, resulting in an expensive and time-consuming legal guardianship. Finally, you need to confirm that the deed for your house shows that you and your spouse own the property as tenants by the entirety. In many cases, if all accounts are correctly titled and beneficiaries are correctly designated, a surviving spouse will avoid the moderately burdensome process of probating a will. 

3. Write a side letter.
Your Last Will and Testament becomes a public document once it is filed with the Court at the beginning of the probate process. The will is also mailed to all of the named beneficiaries and all of your heirs at law. To avoid broadcasting personal instructions for guardians and trustees to anyone with access to the Court’s public records, you can draft a side letter. A side letter is simply a letter that you write (handwritten or printed) and give personal instructions to guardians and trustees about how to raise your kids and how to administer trusts for your kids (how strict or lenient you would like your trustee to be about distributing funds). A side letter is also a good place to include instructions about end of life preferences (to add more personal direction than Living Will) and burial or funeral instructions. You should keep a copy of the side letter with your original estate documents and share a copy with the guardians, trustees and other fiduciaries. &nbsp; 

4. Aggregate financial accounts and passwords using apps.&nbsp;
A lot of financial planners have an online “vault” where you can connect all of your external accounts to automatically track all of your assets. When you keep all of this information in one place, your financial planner (or anyone with the password to your vault) can easily find all of your accounts. The number one stressor for most executors: finding all of the accounts of the decedent. Your financial planner will be able to work with the executor to confirm the locations and balances of all of the accounts, and can reset the password to allow access to the appointed executor if necessary. If your financial planner doesn’t currently offer this option, you can use Personal Capital or Mint (but expect a lot of calls from people trying to manage your money).&nbsp;
In practice, the most helpful information your executor could have is probably access to all of your passwords. There are tons of security issues with using the same password for every account or listing all of your usernames and passwords on a spreadsheet. A better option is to use a password aggregator app like LastPass or 1Password. These apps are free and allow you to chose a master password for access to the app. Once you log into the app, each time you enter a password on a website the app will save the username and password in its vault for later use. Every time you visit a website where the password has previously been saved to the vault, you will see an option to autofill the username and password.&nbsp;
If your executor can gain access to your password aggregator, he or she can immediately log in to your financial planner’s vault (or Personal Capital or Mint) to 1) find all of your financial accounts, 2) disconnect all services like cable and internet, and 3) access email or social media. Although your executor or attorney-in-fact likely has the legal right to access your social media and other digital accounts, it is much easier for that person to have the password rather than wait on a large social media company to grant them access. A hard copy list of usernames and passwords can be helpful (although less secure), but a digitally stored list makes sure that all passwords are up-to-date and easily accessible for your executor. You will have to determine your comfort level with a password aggregator, but the convenience may outweigh security concerns. 

5. Review your estate planning documents annually.
You should take a quick peek at your estate documents once a year. You might find that you feel your parents are now too old to be the guardians of your kids, or you may want a different person to make your health care decisions for you if your spouse is unable. Life changes, and it’s very simple to make small alterations to the documents.
Conclusion
Estate Planning is not complete when you receive the bound copy of your documents. Make sure that the right people have access to the necessary information to make sure that things run smoothly in case something unexpected happens. You can find the form I provide to my clients titled: Being Prepared For The Unexpected <a href="https://estateplanningtn.com/s/Estate-Planning-TN-Being-Prepared-for-the-Unexpected.pdf">here</a>. It’s a great place to compile all of this information and you can slide the document into your estate planning packet. If your executor sees this document, he or she will then know how to find everything they need in case the unexpected happens.&nbsp;
Warner Jones is an estate planning attorney in Nashville, Tennessee. He has an online solution called “Documents Ready” that allows busy families to complete their estate plan with only one meeting for a flat fee at <a href="https://estateplanningtn.com/">estateplanningtn.com</a>. You can reach Warner at <a href="mailto:warner@cartersheltonlaw.com">warner@cartersheltonlaw.com</a>.&nbsp;
*This does not constitute legal advice, and Carter Shelton Jones, PLC is not responsible for any damages related to use of third party applications. Warner Jones andCarter Shelton Jones, PLC are not associated with any of the applications listed herein, nor do they receive any compensation from them.

The foundation of an estate plan is without a doubt the documents. Here are some tips and tricks to help

A Halloween Horror Story

Estate Planning Horror Story (our firm has represented numerous situations similar to the facts below, but this is not an account of any of those cases and is not based on any particular person):&nbsp;
On one dark October night, John was the unfortunate and unexpected victim of a black widow spider bite. &nbsp;John and his ex-wife, Jane, had three children together, all of whom were minors. &nbsp;John and Jane had recently finalized their divorce, and John had transferred the house into his name pursuant to the divorce decree. &nbsp;Nevertheless, John didn’t call his financial planner to talk about his One Million Dollar life insurance policy, so Jane was left as the primary beneficiary of the policy. &nbsp;John and Jane had been diligent and finalized their estate plan while they were together. &nbsp;While Jane was able to locate John’s will upon his death, John hadn’t updated the will after he and Jane got divorced.
When Jane first hired the attorney to probate John’s will, she was shocked to discover that the divorce decree had revoked her position as executor of John’s estate. &nbsp;&nbsp;After contentious negotiations with John’s sister (whom Jane never liked), Jane was able to convince her to consent to Jane’s appointment as the Administrator CTA of the estate. &nbsp;Jane soon realized that administering the estate was the least of her problems. &nbsp;
Because John had decided to update his 401(K) beneficiary designation to split the retirement funds equally between his three children, Jane now had to petition the Court to appoint her as the Legal Guardian for financial purposes for all three children. &nbsp;Prior to the hearing to appoint her as the financial guardian, her attorney told Jane to go ahead and get bond lined up for the guardianship accounts. &nbsp;She nearly fell out of her chair when the bond agent quoted her $2,500 for the yearly bond premium as insurance that she would not steal from the One Million Dollars of retirement funds that John left the kids (bond premiums typically being .25% of the value of the assets).&nbsp;
Since John kept only a few thousand dollars in a checking account and had no savings or stocks, the Estate was in a big cash crunch. &nbsp;Jane ended up loaning the estate money from the insurance proceeds she had received upon John’s death to pay the mortgage on the house until it finally sold.
In the first year after John died, Jane spent approximately $10,000 in legal fees related to the Petition to probate John’s estate, the Petition for Legal Financial Guardianship for the kids, Inventory in both cases and Property Management Plans for both cases. &nbsp;She also had to post bond at a clip of $2,500. &nbsp;It got a little better the next year when she only incurred the $2,500 bond and an additional $2,500 in legal fees to file an Accounting in each of the Guardianships, which detailed every transaction that occurred from each Guardianship account (she spent 3 hours each month maintaining the spreadsheet and filing account statements). &nbsp;
Jane found that she could expect the yearly $5,000 expense for legal fees and bond until her youngest child turned eighteen. &nbsp;Her financial planner was tactful, but the financial forecast he printed for Jane’s yearly review really put her in the dumps. &nbsp;The projection showed that her kids’ inheritance from their father would be reduced by over $100,000 in present value during the 15 years until the last Guardianship case and account could be closed. &nbsp;Jane also spent countless hours going to court and communicating with attorneys over the estate and guardianships. Most of this expense and time could have been avoided with proper estate planning.
That’s terrible, but it would never happen to me, right?
It could – do any of the following apply to you?
<ul>
 <li>No estate planning?</li>
 <li>Real estate in only one spouse’s name?</li>
 <li>Bank account in only one spouse’s name?</li>
 <li>Divorced and have not revisited your estate planning?</li>
 <li>Life Insurance, IRA, 401(k), 403(b), ROTH IRA naming your minor children as a primary or contingent beneficiary?</li>
</ul>
If you have any of the above, your loved ones could suffer their own Estate Planning Horror Story
Lack of estate planning?
If you are married and have children, your assets will not automatically pass to your spouse unless they are held jointly or designated as payable on death. &nbsp;Under Tennessee intestacy laws (the rules that apply if you die without a will), your spouse will be splitting everything equally with your children or receive one-third of your assets, whichever is greater.
If your minor children are set to inherit assets individually (and not in a trust), Tennessee law requires a legal guardianship for financial purposes for an adult to handle the assets until each child becomes an adult. &nbsp;The guardianship requires bond and Court oversight including the review of Inventory, Accounting and a Property Management Plan – all of which are very expensive and time-consuming.
Real estate in one spouse’s name?
If one spouse owns real property in his or her name without the other spouse, the surviving spouse will have to hire an attorney to open an estate in order to get the real estate into the surviving spouse’s name.
Bank &nbsp;or brokerage account in one spouse’s name?
If a spouse has a checking, savings, brokerage or any other taxable account in his or her name only, the surviving spouse will have to open an estate to get access to such an account. &nbsp;Even if the funds in the bank account are negligible, it is still a shame to have money sitting in accounts that no one can access. &nbsp;The easiest way to avoid this issue is to set up all accounts as either joint accounts with both spouse’s names or make the account payable on death (POD) or transfer on death (TOD) to the non-account-owner spouse.
Divorced and have not updated estate planning documents?
In Tennessee, your ex-spouse is removed from any positions they were appointed to in your Will prior to the divorce.
However, all beneficiary designations for retirement accounts and life insurance are not subject to this rule and must be updated or they will go to your ex-spouse if they remain as the primary beneficiary (unless otherwise indicated in the final decree of the divorce / MDA).
Life Insurance, IRA, 401(k), etc. naming minor children as primary or contingent beneficiary?
A legal guardian will have to be appointed by the court to watch over these funds until your children are 18. &nbsp;This guardian will have to post bond, file an Initial Inventory and Property Management Plan, as well as yearly Accounting. This process can cost $10,000 for the first year and $5,000 each year thereafter. It’s not only costly, but also time-consuming.

Estate Planning Horror Story (our firm has represented numerous situations similar to the facts below

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